Jump to content

Jedi Guardian Changes - Game Update 2.5


EricMusco

Recommended Posts

  • Dev Post

Hey everyone,

 

Below are the planned Jedi Guardian changes for Game Update 2.5. Please use this thread to give feedback for these changes. You can read the full class changes blog here!

 

Jedi Guardian

 

Vigilance

  • Debilitation has been added to the Vigilance skill tree and provides a 50/100% chance to immobilize the target for the duration of Master Strike.

Edited by CourtneyWoods
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 612
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

So, a Juggernaut/Guardian will have cc immunity from leap, and with this change ravage/master strike will root the target. Am I the only one who thinks this is a major problem? After every leap the oposing player will have no choise but to eat an entire ravage. Balanced?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, a Juggernaut/Guardian will have cc immunity from leap, and with this change ravage/master strike will root the target. Am I the only one who thinks this is a major problem? After every leap the oposing player will have no choise but to eat an entire ravage. Balanced?

Not balanced at all. They are simply answering to the cry babies who believe vigilance doesn't do enough damage and ignored those who actually pointed out the real problem: We are missing a root breaker.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This change strikes me as a good way to improve the viability of Vigilance in PvP. It unfortunately doesn't do anything for PvE, since boss movement still significantly hampers the spec's ability to maintain its DPS (far more than any other melee). Additionally, this change doesn't address the problem that Vigilance is significantly behind all of the other sustained DPS specs in the game, even when adjusting for gear and execute. The reasoning behind this assertion can be found here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=683087 I would propose that the percent chance on Zen Strike needs to be upped without changing the rate limit. This would reduce the RNG while also giving the class a potentially significant buff to sustained damage, bringing it more in line with other sustained melee DPS specs with weak AoE, such as Dirty Fighting Scoundrels and Balance Shadows.

 

Also, I'm concerned about the lack of changes to the Defense tree. As things stand even in 2.4, Defense Guardians fall substantially behind both Shadows and Vanguards in terms of the overall damage taken. The argument has been made that cooldowns account for this disparity, but shadow cooldowns are nearly as good as guardians (especially in the new operations) and yet they're at the top of the heap in terms of survivability. This is sort of justified today by the fact that shadows are significantly too spiky to be considered for many tanking scenarios (such as 16 man NiMs), and thus they aren't the clear "god mode" tanks. However, in 2.5, the spikiness issues are being quite adeptly resolved (thank you, btw!!) without affecting mean survivability. This means that shadows will be slightly ahead of vanguards in terms of mean survivability and guardians will remain dramatically behind them both while being no less spiky than shadows in 2.5. This sets up a situation where shadows outclass guardians in every possible way.

 

Additionally, guardians currently have issues with Force/Tech heavy instances (e.g. Terror from Beyond and Dread Palace) due to the class's heavy reliance on defense chance. This is a fair tradeoff, and it does set up a nice cross-balance situation with vanguards, but it can be a little annoying. One way to fix both the survivability issues and the over-reliance on defense is to provide a talented buff to shield and absorb. I did the math on this proposal on this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=687924 Roughly, buffing shield chance by 5% and absorb by 15% would bring guardians almost precisely in line with vanguards (still slightly behind for average content) and balance out their mitigation focus, reducing their survivability disparity between melee/ranged heavy bosses (like Nefra) and force/tech heavy bosses (like Brontes).

 

Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that Blade Turning still does not function as the tooltip says it should. The "immunity" to damage during the first instants of Saber Ward is simply not there, and it's easy to verify this is combat logs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, a Juggernaut/Guardian will have cc immunity from leap, and with this change ravage/master strike will root the target. Am I the only one who thinks this is a major problem? After every leap the oposing player will have no choise but to eat an entire ravage. Balanced?

 

It is a "balance change" made without any appearent foresight. In fact, this might be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. Even worse than the buffs to focus in 2.0 and the fact that they're leaving focus with a second leap that break roots.

 

I am disgusted by their so called balance patch and their inability to understand even the simplest combat mechanics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ravage deals similar amount of damage to one Rage-spec smash but over 3 seconds. It's easily interrupted and Juggernauts are easy to control. This is by no means a powerful ability, compared to what other classes can do. New change will only make it SLIGHTLY harder to avoid it. The change will make Juggs only bit more annoying in PvP, due to extra root that's gonna last less than 3 seconds as you'll obviously get stunned or cced in one or the other way!

 

It will still be easily interrupted before the last tick with plethora of abilities most classes have. Stuns, knockbacks, blinds. Good few of popular pvp specs (our primary targets) got root breakers on relatively short cooldowns so there will still be a HIGH (instead of the current 80%) possibility of running away. The new feature we're getting will definitely fill up the resolve bar faster and I think that the major problem is that the new changes are still not evening the odds in both pve and pvp.

 

Juggernaut dps are second most popular targets to bash in arenas, right after sages, due to their awful, almost no defenses. In Vengeance spec they're next to useless in competitive games - both pve and pvp! Good luck enjoying and doing good in rated arenas with Veng/Vigi. All the guys I see there with it are being facerolled and the first thing that comes into my mind (and not just mine) in solo rated is "focus Jug/Guard" when we see one.

 

Those changes are not enough! What about giving Jugs some tools to improve dps so they won't be the lowest-parsing pve class? What about giving dps Juggs some more defenses so they won't be getting smashed, full expertise, for 7k+ every time? :[ Other heavy armor dpsers got plenty of useful defensive tools to reduce incoming damage in foreseeable way. Even with the root it's still going to be very easy to kite poor Juggs. We're wearing heavy armor and what we see when fighting Sins is (-6000, -5000, -5000) every 1.5 second until we're down. Similar to what sentinels can do to us.

 

No other choice but permanently roll a Marauder/Sentinel, then...

Even Annihilation gets better results in PvP. Come on!

Edited by Alec_Fortescue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ravage deals similar amount of damage to one Rage-spec smash but over 3 seconds. It's easily interrupted and Juggernauts are easy to control. This is by no means a powerful ability, compared to what other classes can do. New change will only make it SLIGHTLY harder to avoid it. The change will make Juggs only bit more annoying in PvP, due to extra root that's gonna last less than 3 seconds as you'll obviously get stunned or cced in one or the other way!

 

It will still be easily interrupted before the last tick with plethora of abilities most classes have. Stuns, knockbacks, blinds. Good few of popular pvp specs (our primary targets) got root breakers on relatively short cooldowns so there will still be a HIGH (instead of the current 80%) possibility of running away. The new feature we're getting will definitely fill up the resolve bar faster and I think that the major problem is that the new changes are still not evening the odds in both pve and pvp.

 

Juggernaut dps are second most popular targets to bash in arenas, right after sages, due to their awful, almost no defenses. In Vengeance spec they're next to useless in competitive games - both pve and pvp!

 

Those changes are not enough! What about giving some tools to improve dps so they won't be the lowest-parsing pve class? What about giving dps Juggs some more defenses so they won't be getting smashed, full expertise, for 7k+ every time? :[ Other heavy armor dpsers got plenty of useful defensive tools to reduce incoming damage in foreseeable way. Even with the root it's still going to be very easy to kite poor Juggs. We're wearing heavy armor and what we see when fighting Sins is (-6000, -5000, -5000) every 1.5 second until we're down. Similar to what sentinels can do to us.

 

No other choice but permanently roll a Marauder/Sentinel, then...

Even Annihilation gets better results in PvP. Come on!

 

Lets all ignore this post, obviously trolling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also, I'm concerned about the lack of changes to the Defense tree. As things stand even in 2.4, Defense Guardians fall substantially behind both Shadows and Vanguards in terms of the overall damage taken. The argument has been made that cooldowns account for this disparity, but shadow cooldowns are nearly as good as guardians (especially in the new operations) and yet they're at the top of the heap in terms of survivability. This is sort of justified today by the fact that shadows are significantly too spiky to be considered for many tanking scenarios (such as 16 man NiMs), and thus they aren't the clear "god mode" tanks. However, in 2.5, the spikiness issues are being quite adeptly resolved (thank you, btw!!) without affecting mean survivability. This means that shadows will be slightly ahead of vanguards in terms of mean survivability and guardians will remain dramatically behind them both while being no less spiky than shadows in 2.5. This sets up a situation where shadows outclass guardians in every possible way.

 

Additionally, guardians currently have issues with Force/Tech heavy instances (e.g. Terror from Beyond and Dread Palace) due to the class's heavy reliance on defense chance. This is a fair tradeoff, and it does set up a nice cross-balance situation with vanguards, but it can be a little annoying. One way to fix both the survivability issues and the over-reliance on defense is to provide a talented buff to shield and absorb. I did the math on this proposal on this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=687924 Roughly, buffing shield chance by 5% and absorb by 15% would bring guardians almost precisely in line with vanguards (still slightly behind for average content) and balance out their mitigation focus, reducing their survivability disparity between melee/ranged heavy bosses (like Nefra) and force/tech heavy bosses (like Brontes).

 

Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that Blade Turning still does not function as the tooltip says it should. The "immunity" to damage during the first instants of Saber Ward is simply not there, and it's easy to verify this is combat logs.

 

Juggernauts do not take any more damage than other tanks. I am a big advocate that Shadow/Assassin tanks are fine, players simply don't understand how to gear or play them. Occasionally they get rocked with spike damage, but as a tank it's important to memorize fights and know when you need a cooldown up. That being said, I have to admit that Sin/Shadow takes the most damage of the 3 classes without question. We run one of each tank in our progression group, each manned by a different player. Our Juggernaut takes the least amount of damage by far, and even though the 2 and 4 piece PvE set bonuses are broken his cooldown usage and stat distribution make him the easiest to keep alive.

 

We've talked about this in PM's, but I'll say it here in public: Defense stat is worthless. It is on the same level as Crit rating, where the points invested don't net enough of a significant return to be worth getting any points in. Our Jugg stacks Absorb and HP, with almost no defense and again, he takes the least amount of damage of any of the 3 tanks. He has backed this up with TTK tests that clearly show that Absorb stacking is the way to go for Jugg tanking. All of our tanks are going with low/no Defense, and they're surviving NiM level hits without stressing the healers. Compare this to the majority of groups who fail at NiM content and stack Defense and you have a decent amount of empirical evidence to disprove the original 2.0 theorycrafting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Juggernauts do not take any more damage than other tanks. I am a big advocate that Shadow/Assassin tanks are fine, players simply don't understand how to gear or play them. Occasionally they get rocked with spike damage, but as a tank it's important to memorize fights and know when you need a cooldown up. That being said, I have to admit that Sin/Shadow takes the most damage of the 3 classes without question. We run one of each tank in our progression group, each manned by a different player. Our Juggernaut takes the least amount of damage by far, and even though the 2 and 4 piece PvE set bonuses are broken his cooldown usage and stat distribution make him the easiest to keep alive.

 

Juggernauts take significantly more damage than the other tanks. Read combat logs, and more importantly read the math. Their suite of cooldowns is generally not reflected in the theory crafting, but it's pretty easy to show that the relative strength of juggernaut cooldowns, while better than assassins, is not better by a significant amount. Juggernauts are significantly behind assassins and powertechs in terms of mean mitigation, especially on nightmare content (due to the non-scaling of Sonic Barrier). This isn't even a matter for debate; it is an objective fact supported by proof, not experimentation or argument.

 

Now, I do agree with you that shadow tanks are more ok in the current game than most people think. I still run my shadow tank in nightmare content, and I'm generally fine. Raptus hits like a MOFO, and some highly spiky bosses (e.g. Kephess and Thrasher) are really problematic, but bosses with smooth damage profiles are just fine (Dread Guard minus Kel'sara's super-annoyance instagibs). Shadows do require less external healing than either of the other tanks when geared and played properly.

 

We've talked about this in PM's, but I'll say it here in public: Defense stat is worthless. It is on the same level as Crit rating, where the points invested don't net enough of a significant return to be worth getting any points in. Our Jugg stacks Absorb and HP, with almost no defense and again, he takes the least amount of damage of any of the 3 tanks. He has backed this up with TTK tests that clearly show that Absorb stacking is the way to go for Jugg tanking. All of our tanks are going with low/no Defense, and they're surviving NiM level hits without stressing the healers. Compare this to the majority of groups who fail at NiM content and stack Defense and you have a decent amount of empirical evidence to disprove the original 2.0 theorycrafting.

 

I've told you this in PMs, but I'll say it here in public: Defense is not worthless. Your tests were, as I said, predicated on a lot of incorrect assumptions. (namely: you're assuming that all bosses have the same damage ratios and levels) It is absolutely true that defense is worthless for assassins and mostly worthless for powertechs if you're doing Nightmare TfB or Hard Mode Dread Palace. However, Dread Fortress and Scum and Villainy are significantly more Melee/Ranged heavy, which puts a heavy emphasis on defense. If you care at all about taking less damage, you'll stack it.

 

Counter to your claim, this is all exactly as predicted by the theorycrafting. The original tank distribution numbers were based on HM S&V, which encourages far higher defense ratings than TfB or either of the new operations. The new tank distribution numbers are broken down by operation (DP and DF) and are optimal for each operation. If you're deviating from these numbers, I'm sorry but you're doing it wrong and you're taking more damage than you need to be. Now, your damage profile will have less variation if you abandon defense, but you will objectively take more damage. As I said, this isn't a matter for debate; the math is proof, and unless the math is flawed (which has not yet been established), it represents a far more definitive answer to itemization and balance than RNG-prone practical testing.

 

Your claim about defense-stacking tanks struggling with NiM damage in ways that absorb-stacking tanks aren't struggling is also false. I stack a great deal of defense, and I do just fine in NiM content. Factoring in self-healing, I require less than 1100 HPS on Nightmare Dread Guard when I was doing it in mostly-72 gear. This isn't entirely out of the ordinary for shadow tanks, but it's far less healing than my vanguard cotank required in the same gear or our guardian tank (in another group). In my experience, whether or not a tank is "doing fine" on a fight has more to do with their own skill (cooldown usage and positioning) and the skill of their healer than it does their class and itemization. It's true that some classes are advantaged over others (e.g. shadows will take less damage than guardians given equal gear and skill), but skill has a larger impact than gear. My point is that you can't simply say "our group is clearing content, therefore our tanks are automatically gearing optimally". That's like saying that "our group is clearing content, therefore all four of our DPS are the best in the world for their class and spec". Don't be silly.

 

Overall, I'm going to come back to my original assertion: guardian tanks need a buff. They're simply not as well balanced as vanguards and shadows are, and the math is very clear on this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stuff.

 

/Shrug math isn't everything. When our healers say our Juggernaut is easier to heal than the other two tanks who all gear the exact same way, I'm going to believe them over a bunch of numbers that don't translate into actual fights. When a tank dies on Nefra (we run 16man HM with 8 players so the damage is amplified to the point where tanks actually die), it's our Assassin. When a tank dies on Brontes 6 finger phase, it's our Assassin. When a tank died from Kephess, or TFB, or Thrash while we were doing previous NiM stuff, it was always the Assassin. The only time our PT or Jugg tank die is because of mechanics or when the healers get overloaded from raid damage when we goof. Just because the logs say that the Assassin is taking less damage doesn't mean anything. We have our Juggernaut tank Nefra full time because when our Assassin does, he is more often than not straight dead. In this case, of course the Juggernaut is going to take more damage.

 

The evidence and logs showing that Juggs take the most damage could be that they're gearing incorrectly. If they go heavy defense like you suggest, yeah, they're going to take boatloads of damage. If I were to gear with a 300 Crit rating build because my numbers told me it's best and then say that Marauder DPS is lackluster, then anyone who listened to me would be a fool. Self serving evidence is self serving. Getting set in your ways and being unable to accept that math forumlas do not actually apply into this game as perfectly as you'd like will only hold you back, once we stopped listening to what others were telling us to do and started testing alternative gearing methods out for ourselves, we more often than not found that everyone else was wrong in their assumptions and calculations. In the end, player skill matters more than if you have an extra 5% defense or 4% absorb anyways, no amount of correct gearing is going to help a piss poor player tank endgame. My only point is that when a player has cleared content on a world competitive scale and has tested their methods in game, I'm going to believe them over a bunch of calculated theories. Going back to my ending statement from previous paragraph, there is no 100% definitive way to test who's gearing is better or what is "optimal" other than going in and getting a TTK for each boss and remodding on the fly. One tank may have to boss for 10 more attacks than the other, which skews incoming damage. One tank may hit a cooldown during a particular phase when the other tank doesn't, which skews damage. The only surefire, 100% way to test who is "right" or "wrong" is to run a fight with the same player, playing the same rotation, taking the same damage in the same intervals, running both gearing. We've done that, and what we've found is that Absorb is universally better for tanks than Defense. Run whatever way you like, advocate what you want, but know that others are clearing content faster going 180 from your calculations.

Edited by countpopeula
Link to comment
Share on other sites

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

 

I'm the one vigilance trying to stay on par with sents, and now you buff watchmans but not me?!

 

Wth we are gonna do at pve, we need some sort of DPS increase!

 

ANYTHING.

 

ANYTHING.

 

You are risking making vigilance guardians the joke of the game at this rate, we won't be taken for HM raids at this rate!

 

WAKE UP.

 

NOW.

 

Manwë from Progenitor, so I reserve the right to comment on the issue as a decent Guardian DPS.

Edited by Manweth
Link to comment
Share on other sites

i think guardian tanks need a buff: here is post 2.5 info for various damage weights at 6k pre-mitigation dtps:

 

@6kdps shadow jugg VG

snv dtps 1497 1623 1589

snv spike 0.03712 0.04246 0.03245

tfb dtps 1763 1909 1818

tfb spike 0.04171 0.04755 0.04279

df dtps 1584 1701 1658

df spike 0.04317 0.04924 0.04109

dp dtps 1587 1722 1627

dp spike 0.03526 0.04028 0.03227

 

these do not include cooldowns, such as oil slick, shoulder cannon, saber reflect, resiliance etc.

 

i think guardians will be on par with shadows around 101 gear (we are at 78 now). this is due to the fact that heavy armor outpaces light by about 150 every new tier of gear... this approximation doesnt take other mitigation ratings into account, however.

Edited by dipstik
Link to comment
Share on other sites

ok so we have a root for PVP, but this doesn't address PVE. BW has out and out said that we're lacking utility compared to other classes such as sentinals so why not giving guardians, I dunno a CC maybe, it's not like shadow tanks having CCs breaks anything.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ravage deals similar amount of damage to one Rage-spec smash but over 3 seconds. It's easily interrupted and Juggernauts are easy to control. This is by no means a powerful ability, compared to what other classes can do. New change will only make it SLIGHTLY harder to avoid it. The change will make Juggs only bit more annoying in PvP, due to extra root that's gonna last less than 3 seconds as you'll obviously get stunned or cced in one or the other way!

 

It will still be easily interrupted before the last tick with plethora of abilities most classes have. Stuns, knockbacks, blinds. Good few of popular pvp specs (our primary targets) got root breakers on relatively short cooldowns so there will still be a HIGH (instead of the current 80%) possibility of running away. The new feature we're getting will definitely fill up the resolve bar faster and I think that the major problem is that the new changes are still not evening the odds in both pve and pvp.

 

Juggernaut dps are second most popular targets to bash in arenas, right after sages, due to their awful, almost no defenses. In Vengeance spec they're next to useless in competitive games - both pve and pvp! Good luck enjoying and doing good in rated arenas with Veng/Vigi. All the guys I see there with it are being facerolled and the first thing that comes into my mind (and not just mine) in solo rated is "focus Jug/Guard" when we see one.

 

Those changes are not enough! What about giving Jugs some tools to improve dps so they won't be the lowest-parsing pve class? What about giving dps Juggs some more defenses so they won't be getting smashed, full expertise, for 7k+ every time? :[ Other heavy armor dpsers got plenty of useful defensive tools to reduce incoming damage in foreseeable way. Even with the root it's still going to be very easy to kite poor Juggs. We're wearing heavy armor and what we see when fighting Sins is (-6000, -5000, -5000) every 1.5 second until we're down. Similar to what sentinels can do to us.

 

No other choice but permanently roll a Marauder/Sentinel, then...

Even Annihilation gets better results in PvP. Come on!

 

- A full Ravage will do more damage than one smash. Especially if any of the hits crit.

 

- Roots don't add or respect resolve.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

- A full Ravage will do more damage than one smash. Especially if any of the hits crit.

 

- Roots don't add or respect resolve.

 

Still they're ignored if character has full resolve bar. Crits weren't taken into account, since it's all-luck. Smash always crits. And I didn't say that it's more or less, I said similar - which is true. Besides, there is a greater chance that one of the ravage ticks will miss in one way or get interrupted rather than it critting.

Edited by Alec_Fortescue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Really? Then I can't tell with the Force leap/charge broken beyond imagination landing me so far away from my targets.

 

Lag/Buggy Charge. You can also miss with the attack part of leap since it's a melee attack, you will land where your target was when you started the leap but if you miss no root is applied.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

/Shrug math isn't everything. When our healers say our Juggernaut is easier to heal than the other two tanks who all gear the exact same way, I'm going to believe them over a bunch of numbers that don't translate into actual fights. When a tank dies on Nefra (we run 16man HM with 8 players so the damage is amplified to the point where tanks actually die), it's our Assassin. When a tank dies on Brontes 6 finger phase, it's our Assassin. When a tank died from Kephess, or TFB, or Thrash while we were doing previous NiM stuff, it was always the Assassin. The only time our PT or Jugg tank die is because of mechanics or when the healers get overloaded from raid damage when we goof. Just because the logs say that the Assassin is taking less damage doesn't mean anything. We have our Juggernaut tank Nefra full time because when our Assassin does, he is more often than not straight dead. In this case, of course the Juggernaut is going to take more damage.

 

I absolutely believe that your assassin is dying more than your jugg. This is again predicted by the math, but by a different set of theory crafting than what yields the itemization numbers. Assassin tanks are between 20% and 50% more likely to die on the same content with the same healers playing optimally, so…yeah. If your Jugg is a better player than your Assassin, that probability trebles. Also, it's worth noting that Nefra's damage is (except for the DoT) exclusively melee, and so if your assassin is HP stacking and ignoring defense entirely, he's probably absolutely hell to heal. If I were gearing specifically for that boss, I'd probably have almost 1000 defense rating (not an exact number; just pulled it off the top of my head).

 

The numbers I produce do translate into fights. All of the damage ratios are drawn from real combat logs (especially Suckafish). I've experimented with gearing for specific bosses, then not using cooldowns and looking at exactly the damage I take. It's predicted by the math to within a very tight margin for error. (cooldowns don't affect ideal stat distribution, which is why they aren't included in the models) You're largely just tossing out the math because you don't agree with the conclusions. That's fine, and I really don't care how you choose to itemize your tanks, but you can't do that and pretend that what you're doing is better-supported and more correct than what we're doing when we follow the numbers. Math is and will always be a dramatically better predictor of performance than in-game testing. What happens in-game is highly variable, skill-dependent and even RNG-dependent. Math gives us a way to look at these situations and make decisions that are optimal in general, knowing that there will be outliers for which it is less optimal. For example, you wouldn't gear 0 accuracy on a DPS, even though there are crazy-lucky outliers with even 0 accuracy where you simply don't miss and the extra surge is worth it.

 

The evidence and logs showing that Juggs take the most damage could be that they're gearing incorrectly. If they go heavy defense like you suggest, yeah, they're going to take boatloads of damage.

 

Obviously, if a Jugg is going super-high defense on a fight which is extremely force/tech heavy, then yeah, they'll take more damage than a Jugg who goes lighter on defense for the same fight. However, the exact inverse is true for a fight which is extremely melee/ranged heavy.

 

If you want to test something in a practical environment, test this. Have your Jugg itemize how they see fit (apparently absorb and endurance) and run Nefra. Don't use cooldowns (they'll skew the results and you don't need them on that fight anyway). Look at the combat logs after the fight and check the damage taken. Then, the next week, have that same Jugg itemize according to my Dread Fortress numbers. I guarantee that you'll see a lower damage taken, especially if you tell your DPS to take it easy and stretch out the fight to ensure RNG is factored out. I would imagine you kill this fight in 8 man about as fast as my group (less than 2 minutes); it would be better for the sake of testing if you allow it to stretch out between 4 and 5 minutes.

 

I think you'll find the results surprise you. With that said, if you do the same testing on Tyrans or Brontes, you'll find your "zero defense" advice has a lot more merit. Your Jugg will still find that some defense rating (off the top of my head, about 200-300) is better than none, but it's going to be no where near the amount of defense rating predicted for Dread Fortress. The bosses vary quite a bit. Take a look at the damage ratios thread on the tanking sub-forum to see the evidence for this.

 

If I were to gear with a 300 Crit rating build because my numbers told me it's best and then say that Marauder DPS is lackluster, then anyone who listened to me would be a fool.

 

That's a strawman argument. No one has said 300 crit is ideal for a Marauder of any spec (or if they did, their numbers are wrong). It is optimal for an Arsenal Merc though, and it's below what is optimal for two of the three healers.

 

Self serving evidence is self serving. Getting set in your ways and being unable to accept that math forumlas do not actually apply into this game as perfectly as you'd like will only hold you back, once we stopped listening to what others were telling us to do and started testing alternative gearing methods out for ourselves, we more often than not found that everyone else was wrong in their assumptions and calculations. In the end, player skill matters more than if you have an extra 5% defense or 4% absorb anyways, no amount of correct gearing is going to help a piss poor player tank endgame. My only point is that when a player has cleared content on a world competitive scale and has tested their methods in game, I'm going to believe them over a bunch of calculated theories.

 

I would agree except for the fact that there is a lot of things that go into clearing content competitively above and beyond how your tanks are itemized. This is precisely why theory crafting exists in the first place. It allows us to pare down factors and model things such that we can see differences when we make changes.

 

Here's a factoid for you… The world first TfB HM 16 man kill used an assassin tank. I looked at his logs for their kill, and his rotation was unbelievably fail. I mean, Dark Ward uptime in the 60% range, self-heal HPS in the single-digits, etc. Would you seriously take the advice of said Assassin over that of a well-played Assassin tank who cleared content a week later? Of course not. Said assassin simply had a better group overall and everyone in that group had a more fitting schedule.

 

Another example would be Nightmare Dread Guard. I think we can both agree that Death and Taxes and Grey Order were both clearing content competitively. They came out and claimed (based on practical testing) that the fight was impossible pre-nerf. Everyone mostly agreed with them, except for a couple of theorycrafters who took the damage levels and showed that the fight was indeed possible, but it required an extremely high level of execution from the DPS. Those predictions matched almost exactly with DiLiH's first kill.

 

Just because someone is in a group that is clearing content competitively doesn't mean that they're doing everything right. It just means that they (and more importantly, their group) are doing enough things more right than everyone else. The converse is also true. Just because someone isn't getting world firsts doesn't mean their opinion is to be discarded. My favorite example of this is Red'october, who was previously in a guild who wasn't able to reliably clear the 2.0 HMs even into August, but he was (and is) undeniably one of the foremost gunslingers in the world. Should his opinion have been discarded simply because he wasn't in a group that was pushing the cutting-edge? Absolutely not.

 

You're right that only a fool would zero in exclusively on numbers when practical evidence asserts exactly the contrary. However, one would be no less foolish to inflate the value of practical evidence and/or make unsupported inferences from same and discard numbers entirely. Neither of these approaches make any sense.

 

Minor caveat: I do agree with you 100% that tank skill has a heck of a lot more of an impact on how much damage they take and how much healing they require. We have a shadow tank who is itemized optimally and in gear that is roughly where mine was a few months ago, but is nearly impossible to keep up on a wide range of content. That doesn't mean he's gearing incorrectly, it just means that he's making a lot of mistakes (which we've identified in videos).

 

Going back to my ending statement from previous paragraph, there is no 100% definitive way to test who's gearing is better or what is "optimal" other than going in and getting a TTK for each boss and remodding on the fly. One tank may have to boss for 10 more attacks than the other, which skews incoming damage. One tank may hit a cooldown during a particular phase when the other tank doesn't, which skews damage. The only surefire, 100% way to test who is "right" or "wrong" is to run a fight with the same player, playing the same rotation, taking the same damage in the same intervals, running both gearing. We've done that, and what we've found is that Absorb is universally better for tanks than Defense. Run whatever way you like, advocate what you want, but know that others are clearing content faster going 180 from your calculations.

 

You haven't done that with every fight. You've done that with individual controlled bosses and then over-generalized the results to every boss. I've told you exactly what is wrong with your approach. You don't have to take my advice, but don't pretend that your methods are more valid than they are.

 

What you are describing (computing TTKs on bosses) is precisely where the current round of theorycrafting started. We took that data (and we do have a small mountain of it now) and used it to make predictions about exactly what mods are optimal on average. We can compute very precise error deltas if we wanted to and say exactly how far off of the averages you could expect to be from one pull to the next. If we wanted to, we could very easily predict precise TTKs for every stat budget and optimal itemization for every tank for every fight on an individual basis. Basically, all of the things you're saying should be done are old news. We've done them, and we built on that information to generate gearing advice.

 

Just because HMD Magenta's tanks are ignoring optimal statting and getting world firsts doesn't mean that is the right approach. It also doesn't mean it's universal. Again, don't over-generalize. Numerous guilds that are raiding competitively are following optimal statting and doing just fine. My guild cleared 4/5 in both of the new HMs within the first four days after the content dropped, we just didn't report it on the world progression thread (as many guilds don't). So, we would have top 5 clears on eight of the bosses, and top 20 on the others. Yet our tanks are following the computed optimal statting for each instance and seem to be doing just fine.

 

As I said, I ultimately don't care how you have your tanks gear. That's your choice, and frankly I don't think it's going to affect your success as a guild dramatically one way or another. You have a good group, and a few hundred defense (or lack thereof) isn't going to change that. What I care about is when you come here and you directly contradict well-supported and proven math on the basis of a practical testing method with known flaws. In a nutshell: do whatever you want and believe whatever results you feel are best, but don't make incorrect claims to other people without being up-front about the strengths and weaknesses of the way in which you arrived at those claims.

Edited by KeyboardNinja
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You are risking making vigilance guardians the joke of the game at this rate, we won't be taken for HM raids at this rate!

 

We get taken for HM raids now? Seriously though, we already don't get taken if there is any other class available, now it just makes it even worse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Generally speaking this is a bad move for being the only change. It will be QoL aid for PvP Vig that's it. Its worthless for PvE who also needed something to improve Master Strike's reliability in mobile fights.

 

There's no changes to Zen Strike and Focused Defense which both needed it.

 

Honestly the biggest effect this will have is the QQ in PvP boards for a little while before most of the Guards/Juggs go back to Focus/Rage for PvP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...