Version 2 of my Powertech guide is now up, thanks to all of you involved in the first thread this guide has become a roaring success. Version two cleans up a couple of small mistakes and adding sections including;

 

• Companions

• Crew Skills

• Pyrotech DPS

• Advanced Prototype DPS

• PvP Tanking

 

Hope you all find the new guide useful!

Edited December 23, 2011 by Elicas

So even without parses, which build do you recommend for dps? What about levelling? Personal recommendations would make this guide better in my opinion.

You need to be consistent with terms.

 

You are defining total mitigation as "Total Mitigation is the sum of our Avoidance and our Shielding". That is simply wrong. Mitigation by definition means to reduce the intensity or force of something. Dodge and Parry are avoidance because you do not get hit at all. Total Mitigation would be the combination of things like armor, resistance, and whether or not you block a particular. However, block is RNG based and is not something you can rely on. As such Block doesn't belong in EH calculations, but more on that in a little while.

 

You also seem to be confused about 100% total mitigation. You say, "A good rule of thumb for tanks trying to be a mitigation tank, is that you want to aim for as close to 100% total mitigation as possible." 100% total mitigation would, not only being redundant, mean that when you a mob lands an attack you take no damage from the attack. I think you are looking for something along the lines of combat table coverage. CTC would be defined be defined as the sum of avoidance (dodge and parry) and block chance. Reaching 100% CTC (provided you are attacking a same level mob) would then mean you never take a melee attack without at least partially mitigating it through a block.

 

You also need to incorporate the concept of Time to Live (TTL). You are attempting to have Effective Health (EH) pull double duty. EH is simply the amount of raw damage you can take without heals and without blocks (unless you are at 100% CTC) before dying. You do not increase your EH by avoiding an attack. You increase your TTL by avoiding an attack. EH is a metric used to determine short term survivability when nothing is going in your favor. TTL on the other hand is the metric used to determine how long you will live on average without the input of heals. It should be noted that TTL really only holds true over long periods of time. As you narrow the time frame TTL can be drastically skewed by things such as avoidance streaks, or avoidance droughts.

 

I also don't know if your math for what you are calling Average mitigation is correct or not. Personally, I think a better term would be Average Damage Reduction (ADR). I'd need more time and a little bit more time to look at some of the specific mechanics for TOR to check the math, but something feels off. Specifically I am looking at this term:

(((100-A)-((100-A)*B))*(1-D))

 

I think it needs to be (((100-A)-(100-B))*(1-D)) since ((100-A)*B) would seem to be assuming that your block chance is not based on the total number of attacks directed towards you. Thinking of it as a hierarchical combat table it would look like this:

 

My proposal

Avoid 00.00-15.00

Block 15.01-47.01

Hit 47.02-100.00

 

This is how you propose it:

Avoid 00.00-15.00

Block 15.01-42.21

Hit 42.22-100.00

 

This would need to be investigated using parses over a long period of time.

 

Just some things to think about. Nice start on the guide though. Just think you need to clarify some terms. Nailing down the combat table will help a lot on the math side of things too.

You need to be consistent with terms.

 

You are defining total mitigation as "Total Mitigation is the sum of our Avoidance and our Shielding". That is simply wrong. Mitigation by definition means to reduce the intensity or force of something. Dodge and Parry are avoidance because you do not get hit at all. Total Mitigation would be the combination of things like armor, resistance, and whether or not you block a particular. However, block is RNG based and is not something you can rely on. As such Block doesn't belong in EH calculations, but more on that in a little while.

 

You also seem to be confused about 100% total mitigation. You say, "A good rule of thumb for tanks trying to be a mitigation tank, is that you want to aim for as close to 100% total mitigation as possible." 100% total mitigation would, not only being redundant, mean that when you a mob lands an attack you take no damage from the attack. I think you are looking for something along the lines of combat table coverage. CTC would be defined be defined as the sum of avoidance (dodge and parry) and block chance. Reaching 100% CTC (provided you are attacking a same level mob) would then mean you never take a melee attack without at least partially mitigating it through a block.

 

You also need to incorporate the concept of Time to Live (TTL). You are attempting to have Effective Health (EH) pull double duty. EH is simply the amount of raw damage you can take without heals and without blocks (unless you are at 100% CTC) before dying. You do not increase your EH by avoiding an attack. You increase your TTL by avoiding an attack. EH is a metric used to determine short term survivability when nothing is going in your favor. TTL on the other hand is the metric used to determine how long you will live on average without the input of heals. It should be noted that TTL really only holds true over long periods of time. As you narrow the time frame TTL can be drastically skewed by things such as avoidance streaks, or avoidance droughts.

 

I also don't know if your math for what you are calling Average mitigation is correct or not. Personally, I think a better term would be Average Damage Reduction (ADR). I'd need more time and a little bit more time to look at some of the specific mechanics for TOR to check the math, but something feels off. Specifically I am looking at this term:

(((100-A)-((100-A)*B))*(1-D))

 

I think it needs to be (((100-A)-(100-B))*(1-D)) since ((100-A)*B) would seem to be assuming that your block chance is not based on the total number of attacks directed towards you. Thinking of it as a hierarchical combat table it would look like this:

 

My proposal

Avoid 00.00-15.00

Block 15.01-47.01

Hit 47.02-100.00

 

This is how you propose it:

Avoid 00.00-15.00

Block 15.01-42.21

Hit 42.22-100.00

 

This would need to be investigated using parses over a long period of time.

 

Just some things to think about. Nice start on the guide though. Just think you need to clarify some terms. Nailing down the combat table will help a lot on the math side of things too.

 

I had no idea things were this serious.

But wow...great post, haha.

I had no idea things were this serious.

But wow...great post, haha.

 

I spent a long time both tanking and dps'ing as a warrior in WoW (about 7 years). I was very active in the forums as well for most of that time. Nothing makes forums a cesspool of confusion like having counter-intuitive terms or not having the work critically peer reviewed. Since SWTOR is a new game I wanted to attempt to avoid the problems I saw at the beginning of WoW; well, the entire time in WoW, tbh.

 

@OP: don't take my post as mocking your work. I merely saw inconsistencies that would cause you headaches later on. I have written guides before for a class forum and not having terms that are very easy to follow caused a lot of extra work later on.

 

As for the two role system: I think most games that use a 2 roll system tend to have it set up for base outcome to see if there is a hit or not, then using a second roll to see if the attack is critical or not. Things that would need to be checked for are whether or not a blocked attack can crit or not. That is usually the easiest way to see if it is a two role system or not.

 

It is also possible that PvE uses a 1 roll system while PvP runs off a 2 roll system. WoW used a similar system because a lot of classes had talents based around scoring a crit and things like block and later resilience (stat that suppressed crit rates) deflated the value of those talents. An incoming crit could be blocked in PvP, but not in PvE. Defensive talents that triggered when you were crit were accounted for by adding a second roll that triggered off any attack that landed on you with a chance equal to your resilience.

 

Without seeing the Dev's quote it is hard to determine in what context they were meaning having a two roll combat table. This is just another thing that needs to be investigated.

So even without parses, which build do you recommend for dps? What about levelling? Personal recommendations would make this guide better in my opinion.

 

As you say, there are no parses, how could I possibly know which DPs spec performs better? Play whatever you enjoy, in the current state of the game it does not matter.

 

 

<Snip>.

 

I really appreciate this level of feedback, as your peers are the best critics.

 

Total Mitigation - I use the term Total Mitigation to define the state where every hit you receive is dodged, parried or shielded. From how you define it what you say is 100% correct, the same in how I am correct in how I define it. I think there needs to be some sort general rule of thumb for phrases used within this game.

 

100% Total Mitigation - You're entirely correct in that is exactly what I was trying to state, I simply didn't have the words to say it quite how I wanted.

 

TTL vs EH - I havn't incorporated TTL, simply due to the fact I'm not 100% sure on the maths for it! While this stuff might come easy to alot of you, it takes me hours of slaving away to come up with the simplest calculations for this kind of thing.

 

Average Mitigation - This calculation is the one used by Gradius in solving Paladin Mitigation in WoW, as Gradius is a good friend of mine who i've worked with at TankTelara and TankSpot, and how I find a BH seems to work very similarly along the lines of a Paladin, I simply used their calculation while waiting for a parser to become available.

 

I'd love for you to PM me, I love these sorts of discussions, and it'll provide invaluable help with the next iteration of the guide.

 

Thanks again.

The issue is that the word "mitigation" means reduction in damage received. Avoidance is the word for not even getting hit. That's why total mitigation is not the proper terminology.

How does the thirty percent reduction on taunts work? Like say I neural dart an npc and they do an aoe that hits everyone. Does it reduce aoe damage taken by the rest of the group ? Or is it more that it reduces damage if the npc or pc does abilities when not targeting me?

Will be making some adjustments to the terminology over the next week or so to try and make things a bit clearer.

 

Merry Xmas all.

You mention that you're unsure if the game uses a one-roll or two-roll system. It's two-roll, source provided in link.

 

http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-SW-TOR-Mechanics-The-Basics

 

I know it's also common to include Prototype Gas Cylinders as a no-brainer, but the actual amount of damage and threat added is miniscule. We're talking ~40 damage per proc in my current gear, when RP is hitting for ~1200 non-crit...and it crits often. I've put that point into Neural Overload for mild utility/PvP in the meantime.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Mesrith

You mention that you're unsure if the game uses a one-roll or two-roll system. It's two-roll, source provided in link.

 

http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-SW-TOR-Mechanics-The-Basics

 

I know it's also common to include Prototype Gas Cylinders as a no-brainer, but the actual amount of damage and threat added is miniscule. We're talking ~40 damage per proc in my current gear, when RP is hitting for ~1200 non-crit...and it crits often. I've put that point into Neural Overload for mild utility/PvP in the meantime.

 

Thanks for the link, will incorporate that into the guide when I make the adjustments for V3.

 

As to the damage and threat added from PgC, bear in mind this is a constant threat boost. With our +50% threat 40 damage becomes 60 threat, every time it procs. While the numbers look small, over the course of a decent Operations boss fight, this will proc a good 100-150 times.

 

That's an extra 6000-9000 threat, compared to an extra 4000-6000 threat. For one point, that's not bad at all.

 

Numbers hypothetical yada yada yada.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Elicas

Oh my it's Jathine. I missed the walls of numbers!

WHat would be really awesome is if you could compile a starting Level 50 tanking gear list. There seems to be a good amount of options between PVE crafted sets, PVP sets, commendations, Modded vs. Non modded armor.

 

Thanks.