Came across this statement in another post:

B mod gearing is indeed optimal.

and it reminded me I'd been wanting to research this.

KBN said it, so I'm inclined simply to take it on faith, but--is this true in every situation?

I know in the past (thinking 2.x) that one rule of thumb was unlettered mods for Guardians/Juggs and Van/PTs but B-mods for Shadow/Sins. But that was also prior to the overhaul to Harnessed Shadows/Darkness and how it affected mitigation and Shadow/Sins became less spiky.

I've switched from Guardian to Shadow tanking in 3.0, and despite that old rule of thumb, I've been looking at the unlettered mods and seeing how their mitigation stats are pretty nice. I'm sitting at 54K health, and...mitigation is good, right? And that's a lot of health. Plenty of health?

I haven't seen much (or maybe I've just been missing it) discussing this axiom, so--B mods are supreme? And is that for every tank type, or again just Shadow/Sins?

so--B mods are supreme?

B mods increase your hp pool by maintaining a resonable value of defstats. The tradeoff by switching unlettered mods to b-mods is smaller than switching enhancements or using hp augments. HP is good for two reasons :

1. The more HP you have the less squishy you will be. Furthermore your spikiness will be the same than with unlettered mods, because shielld is not present on mods.

2. The more HP you have the more "protection" you have against internal/elemental dmg. This sort of damage can not be reduced by defstats therefore increasing HP is vital to survive a little longer without heal. Many bossfights consist of pretty much internal/elemental dmg. HP increases ttl regardless of dmg type, defstats increase ttl of non internal attacks. The more defstats you have the less ttl 1 defstat more will offer. At a certain treshold ttl increases more with hp than with defstats. Using B-mods will likely increase your dtps of attacks that are not internal but might smoothen your dtps graph which also represents spikiness and squishiness.

However the difference might not be as big as compared playing perfectly it certainly helps in situation where you or your raid does not play perfect which is often at bosses that have random factors or especially at bossfights you are still learning.

KBN said it, so I'm inclined simply to take it on faith, but--is this true in every situation?

For the current tier and how the damage profile is set up - yes.

My personal experience (please correct me if I'm wrong).

In the previous tier (DF / DP NiM) the boss fights had several small attacks in quick succession that could be mitigated - meaning that it was more beneficial to go with a full mitigation build since you could shield / absorb a fair number of attacks. While in this tier (Rav / ToS HM) the boss fights have fewer, but bigger attacks that can not be mitigated (ie I/E). Having more HP will give you a buffer against those types of attacks.

Simply put; with B-mods you are trading mitigation stat for endurance at a 1:1 rate, while with enhancement (Immunity / Sturdiness vs. Bulwark / Bastion) the trade off is + 26 endurance for + 29 main so using B-mods is better than using endurance enhancements. Another thing is (for PT tanks at least) - the Ultimate Commendation earpiece / implants are very good since they give + 44 / - 47.

For reference, my PT tank sits at around 57k HP in 198 gear.

Thanks for both of the replies so far; they've been extremely helpful.

But ahh, the slipperiness of language. If you don't mind a follow-up question?

Simply put; with B-mods you are trading mitigation stat for endurance at a 1:1 rate, while with enhancement (Immunity / Sturdiness vs. Bulwark / Bastion) the trade off is + 26 endurance for + 29 main so using B-mods is better than using endurance enhancements.

With the use of 'mods' to mean all three slots but also the name of the one specific slot and based on the differentiation made by that statement: I want to make sure that the recommendation is specifically to use B-Mods (the specific slot) vs. B-mods (Mods and Enhancements)?

Or should I specifically be trying to stack lettered Mods -and- Enhancements?

(However, good thing I'm a packrat, I think I still have my B-Mods in the Cargo Hold I can pull out and dust off )

With the use of 'mods' to mean all three slots but also the name of the one specific slot and based on the differentiation made by that statement: I want to make sure that the recommendation is specifically to use B-Mods (the specific slot) vs. B-mods (Mods and Enhancements)?

Use lettered mods for that specific slot (ie Deflecting 38B mod or Weighted 38B mod) and the high mitigation enhancement (ie Sturdiness enhancement 38).

Hope that made it clearer.

Use lettered mods for that specific slot (ie Deflecting 38B mod or Weighted 38B mod) and the high mitigation enhancement (ie Sturdiness enhancement 38).

 

Hope that made it clearer.

Yes, it does. Thank you kindly.

on average, the tanks will take the following extra damage:

sin: 0.0032*dps

jugg: 0.0025*dps

pt: 0.0026*dps

and get around 3k more health. this is for full revanite, switching all mods.

this thread has a lot of info and theory about b mod use: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=806075

napkin math gives you get about 6000/dps more seconds of life using all b mods in revanite gear (assumes 52k versus 55k health and 0.003 higher squish, with 0.44 as the squish in unlettered mods). for 4500 dps thats 1.33 more seconds to live. for a t minute fight you take 0.003*t*60*dps more damage.

Similar question for enhancements:

I have a few Mk-2's laying around. Would it be worth it to upgrade from 37 Sturdiness / Immunity enhancements to a 38 Bulwark / Bastion enhancement?

It looks like a +32 jump in endurance, +9 gain in Shield, and a -22 loss in def/ab and I may have to swap some augs to make up for the lost def/ab.

The unlettered mod trade off is a bit too steap imo. Quite a large endurance loss in comparison with what you actually gain in mitigation. I believe there is also a willpower gain which is not optimal as it is a dps only stat.

However, I'm currently running two defence mods on my shadow tank and both are unlettered, the rest are absorbtion mods which are B mods. Reason for this is I need to keep defence as close to 500 as possible and its currently at 445.

My view: use unlettered mods to cover a small defecit but don't use them to fluff out mitigation, maybe 2 or 3 at the most.

Imo B-mods has become a must. The huge spikes at Revan, unmitigatable dmg spikes at HK phase and how the core peel of layers of your max hp. At some point you just gotta stack some hp to give your healers a global cd to react and get you back up. For stacking a few extra hit points b-mods works great. To give a better picture. im still at 1.5k dtps during the entire revan hm fight in total.

In the same gear im still at sub 1k dtps tanking cmdrs hm. So its not like my defenses are gimped in anyway.

Its about the huge spikes. and hp enough to give your healers a sec.