On another note, thank you for finally posting your stats. Now here's something rather funny: your stats are closer to Justcae's than they are to the high defense build that I've been arguing against! The truth of the matter is that it is laughable to debate at this length over such a difference. Of course, I had no idea since only you knew your stats. If you really get this bent about ~13% vs ~16% defense, then I fear for you. You are comparing two different amounts of defense (~15 vs ~16) that hadn't even been brought up in the thread. Were the voices in your head so bothersome to you that you had to start debating your own two numbers that hadn't even been discussed?

 

Your build is good. So is Justcae's. Did you somehow miss the fact that the high-defense AMR profile from earlier had 22% defense? That is what I find somewhat objectionable.

I used my lower stats gear to mimic what you use....My gear is fine I'm not worried about that

EDIT: Because that armor has more absorb/shield as I have modded it myself. /Sigh this guy is so ignorant

All you do is talk about how I don't understand. But obviously I put out the numbers you asked for. And you still act like a d*ck and try to put me down with personal attacks.

Regardless, anyone who could actually benefit from this, if you are sitting at 15/60/60, take more defense. The rest of these idiots are just trolling at this point

I used my lower stats gear to mimic what you use....My gear is fine I'm not worried about that

 

All you do is talk about how I don't understand. But obviously I put out the numbers you asked for. And you still act like a d*ck and try to put me down with personal attacks.

 

Regardless, anyone who could actually benefit from this, if you are sitting at 15/60/60, take more defense.

You put out the numbers that I asked for, but they're not your real numbers? Ok...in any case, this thread is informative enough despite your repeated dithering. There's no need to continue further. There's a lot of good information put out above and below your posts which, lacking as they are in logic are easy enough to ignore. I think we're done here.

I used my lower stats gear to mimic what you use....My gear is fine I'm not worried about that

Almost no difference between Campaign and Dread Guard.

Regardless, anyone who could actually benefit from this, if you are sitting at 15/60/60, take more defense.

Don't. See above.

Wanted to pop back in and say thanks to all who posted. Even though tempers flared and feelings may have gotten hurt. TONS of good info was presented. I personally feel like I know the directions to take now as I progress into Nightmare mode.

Quick final question. SR vs. Absorb has been stated to be optimal at the same percentages (60/60, 59/59, etc). Would the shield being a proc and the absorb being in relation only if the proc happens mean I should probably go a bit higher with the SR (also we have the ion boost of 4%).

After carefully weighing both side I have optimized into the following Def: 18% SR 59% Absorb 58%. Tanked a bit last night and felt VERY "tanky".

Thanks again for all the great posts.

Hi,

is accuracy useless for a powertech tank ? why ?

thank

is accuracy useless for a powertech tank ? why ?

The only attacks you (should) use as a VG tank that benefit from Accuracy are High Impact Bolt (15 sec CD, hits hard but not that important because of the long CD) and Hammer Shot. Everything else (Energy Blast, Ion Pulse, Explosive Surge, Stockstrike, Mortar Volley, Pulse Cannon) are Tech attacks and, as such, gain no benefit from accuracy (since they already hit 100% of the time). HiB and Hammer Shot are such a minute portion of your total threat and damage generation, that you'll see such tiny returns from stacking accuracy that it's functionally worthless. You're better off stacking Power if you need more threat, but, since you're a tank, you're better off just taunt spamming to solve any potential threat problems and cramming more mitigation into there.

After spending some time reading this thread, I feel I must point out 3 things.

It doesn't. See: This is a diminishing return graph!

1. This graph is outdated, however the formulas that the graph were from have been updated and are here. Justcae does however make a point that there are diminishing returns. For example, from some number crunching I did, at around 360 absorption rating for every 1 more absorption you get you get +0.05% absorption (it drops even more as you go higher).

 

3) Shield and Absorb relate to one another on a 1 : 1 basis. If you have 25% Shield, and 50% absorb, and are attacked 100 x's for 100 damage you can expect to absorb 1250 damage. If you have 50% Shield and 25% absorb with the same parameters you can expect to absorb 1250 damage. They relate directly with one another. Hooray!

 

2. This needs some qualifiers. Justcae you are correct that 25% shield and 50% absorb produces the same results as 50% shield and 25% absorb. However 20% shield and 55% absorb does not produce the same results as 25% and 50% absorb. I don't know if that's what you meant by a 1 : 1 relationship, I may be interpreting that incorrectly. However it is true that for all values of shield and absorb that if you interpose them you get the same results. ie. 10% shield 50% absorb is the same as having 50% shield and 10% absorb.

15% Defense, and 60% shield does not mean that you will mitigate 75% of attacks. Instead it means you will mitigate 15% + (60% * .85) = 66% of all ranged/melee attacks.

15%, 60%, 60%

1) 15% chance 100% damage

2) .85 * .6 = 51% chance 60% damage

 

15% + (51% * 60%) = 45.6% of damage mitigated

3. The above statements are talking about 2 different properties.

The first one by JustCae is refers to the number of incoming attacks. It means that 66% of incoming energy or kinetic attacks will result in you dodging or your shield activating.

The second statement by MattFrontino refers to the amount of damage actually mitigated by your shield absorbing damage, or you dodging it. The other thing I feel is somewhat pertinent is that the math in both cases is correct.

So having 15% dodge, 60% shield and 60% absorb will result in 66% of kinetic/energy attacks being dodged or absorbed and have 45.6% of the damage from kinetic/energy attacks being mitigated from either dodge or absorbtion.

However that being said I'm not very familiar with what is/isn't possible so I don't know if 15% dodge, 60% shield, and 60% absorb is possible.

I clear HM TFB and EC 8man and 16m as tank Vanguard

30.1khps

8591 Armor

Def: 16%

Shield: 55%

Absorb: 55%

I'm currently running this. I would have preferred getting the immunity and sturdiness enhancements instead, but I couldn't find a crafter nor find them at any of the black hole/campaign vendors, so I had to make do with what I could find.

It's not perfect, a WH defense relic combined with swapping a bunch of defense augments for absorb would probably give better overall stats, but since I don't like PVP that's just not something I've gotten around to acquiring yet.

 

Current progress: EC HM 4/4, TFB HM 5/5. Haven't had a chance at EC NiM since it was our other tanks turn in the rotation when we did that.

I've actually changed my mind on defense since then - I made that build by swapping mods around on askmrrobot and doing some math in my head to try to figure out the best distribution, but I made the mistake of calculating defending an attack as mitigating the full damage of the attack, but a large portion of the undefended damage would be shielded and/or absorbed by armor anyway and is thus worth a lot less then one might think at first. Since then, I've made a spreadsheet to calculate the actual total mitigation, and it shows that max mean mitigation is achieved with defense somewhere between 350-400 (including the bonus from your fortitude stim) depending on your total amount of mitigation points available - if you're using 27b mods it will be about 350, but if you use 27 unlettered mods it's about 400, both numbers are assuming that you're using a proc absorb relic (which was also shown to be vastly superior to a second static defense/shield relic, mean damage taken went down about 10% assuming it takes 4 seconds to get the proc back up after each ICD - however that's assuming that you want to keep your HP at the same level as it would be with the static mitigation relic, which would mean swapping 3 mitigation augments for endurance augments, thus reducing the static gain you would have recieved).

Considering all that, my new goal build is this: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/19527195-7b26-482e-9654-d8861785338c

I've switched to 27b mods mainly for Kephess in EC NiM - he puts out a lot of unmitigateable damage in short bursts, so I want to have more of a buffer for that, but the endurance augments honestly aren't really necessary - that's mostly a "I'm so close to 29k anyway, I might as well just push it over the edge".

Absorb may seem a little low, but there's an extra 455 points in it about a quarter of the time so raising it higher causes serious diminishing returns when the proc is active, which compensates for the slightly lower mitigation while waiting for the ICD to run out again.

Tl;Dr, that's the absolute maximum mean mitigation you can get out of your gear assuming that you want that amount of HP and that it takes 4 seconds to reactivate the proc after each ICD.

Hi! I'm Cae!

3) Shield and Absorb relate to one another on a 1 : 1 basis. If you have 25% Shield, and 50% absorb, and are attacked 100 x's for 100 damage you can expect to absorb 1250 damage. If you have 50% Shield and 25% absorb with the same parameters you can expect to absorb 1250 damage. They relate directly with one another. Hooray!

I was wondering where you got the info for this, I would like to read into it more and try to figure out if it really means that the added bonus will always equal out in a real world situation. one would think that if you have a low chance to shield or absorb then it would hurt you rather then even out. I see on paper it would, but it seems like it is a safer bet to just have them as equal as you could get them.

Hi! I'm Cae!

4) Defense and Shield fight with one another in other ways. Defense (dodge) is rolled first. if you are subject to a melee/ranged attack and don't dodge, the attack hits you. Your shield chance is then rolled. If you shield... Hooray!

 

Unfortunately what this means is that Every point you place into defense, it hurts your shield and absorb.

 

15% Defense, and 60% shield does not mean that you will mitigate 75% of attacks. Instead it means you will mitigate 15% + (60% * .85) = 66% of all ranged/melee attacks.

I was also wondering where you got the hard info for this as well. I was reading on mmo mechanics http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-492.html that this is how the roll system is:

"First is a hit roll, accuracy versus defense, and if the attacker misses then no damage occurs. If the attacker rolled poorly enough to miss even discounting the target's defense then a "Miss" result occurs. If he misses because of the defense then the result varies based on the attack type, the cover state of the target, and the target's equipped weapons. All the possible results - Dodge, Parry, Deflect, Resist, Cover - are mathematically the same, but they can trigger different effects and are visualized in different ways.

If the attacker hits, then a second roll is made with the crit chance of the attacker versus the shield chance of the target. If a Crit or a Shield occurs then the damage is adjusted up or down (based on Surge/Absorb), and then it goes through to the armor and damage resistance. A critical can never be shielded, and an attacker with a high enough crit chance can push the target's shield chance off the table. It shouldn't be possible to get your passive crit chance high enough to start pushing off the target's shield chance, but there are short-duration buffs that push these chances high enough to come into conflict."

So from my reading im trying to figure out if its a continuous roll like your showing (with the base roll being at 100% then going down based on defense) or a double roll system with it being at 100%, then if the attack still goes through the first roll to the second then it would start at 100% again going up against the shield and so on.

If you have the chance for the attack to miss you completely then go to the second roll of your shield wouldn't you want that? please correct me otherwise but the way im seeing it is that you have the chance for an attack to miss you on the first roll, based on just a plain miss or a defensive miss. If the attack isn't missed it then goes to shield chance and mitigation before armor reduction and so on.

So the way you described it as "15% + (60% * .85) = 66%" would be wrong.

It would be 15% for the attack to miss, then if it doesn't there's a 60% chance to be shielded based off a 100% that went threw the first roll. Now it doesn't mean it would be a 75% mitigate to all attacks, it means that there's a total of a 75% chance to mitigate an attack, and only a 60% chance to mitigate and attack if the first 15% doesn't.

Im just trying to get a better understanding of the whole system no intention to troll or discredit , so if you have data off other sites or tests people have done I would love to see and read them.

I was wondering where you got the info for this, I would like to read into it more and try to figure out if it really means that the added bonus will always equal out in a real world situation. one would think that if you have a low chance to shield or absorb then it would hurt you rather then even out. I see on paper it would, but it seems like it is a safer bet to just have them as equal as you could get them.

Just comes down to basic math. My post shortened it largely. For a more broken down look at the following.

Assume you have 100 attacks that deal 100 damage. Over the course of those 100 attacks you will be dealt damage (100 x 100) = 10,000.

If your shield were 80 and your absorb were 20 you would look like this.

100 attacks, 80 shields, of those shields you absorb 20 damage. 80 * 20 = 1600 damage absorbed.

Reverse the numbers. 100 attacks w/20 shield and 80 absorb. 20 * 80 = 1600 damage absorbed.

Again just really basic math. Now due to stat curves and such, the ratings required for each may be different and there in lines the balancing. It's just important to know that if you are stressing between 51% Shield, and 50% absorb and 50% shield, and 51% absorb they are the same.

Secondly, if you are taking one away from the other it doesn't relate evenly if you are not just switching the numbers. 51/50 relates directly to 50/51, not 47/54 or any other number you can come up with. Again, just very basic math.

I was also wondering where you got the hard info for this as well. I was reading on mmo mechanics http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-492.html that this is how the roll system is:

 

"First is a hit roll, accuracy versus defense, and if the attacker misses then no damage occurs. If the attacker rolled poorly enough to miss even discounting the target's defense then a "Miss" result occurs. If he misses because of the defense then the result varies based on the attack type, the cover state of the target, and the target's equipped weapons. All the possible results - Dodge, Parry, Deflect, Resist, Cover - are mathematically the same, but they can trigger different effects and are visualized in different ways.

 

If the attacker hits, then a second roll is made with the crit chance of the attacker versus the shield chance of the target. If a Crit or a Shield occurs then the damage is adjusted up or down (based on Surge/Absorb), and then it goes through to the armor and damage resistance. A critical can never be shielded, and an attacker with a high enough crit chance can push the target's shield chance off the table. It shouldn't be possible to get your passive crit chance high enough to start pushing off the target's shield chance, but there are short-duration buffs that push these chances high enough to come into conflict."

 

So from my reading im trying to figure out if its a continuous roll like your showing (with the base roll being at 100% then going down based on defense) or a double roll system with it being at 100%, then if the attack still goes through the first roll to the second then it would start at 100% again going up against the shield and so on.

 

If you have the chance for the attack to miss you completely then go to the second roll of your shield wouldn't you want that? please correct me otherwise but the way im seeing it is that you have the chance for an attack to miss you on the first roll, based on just a plain miss or a defensive miss. If the attack isn't missed it then goes to shield chance and mitigation before armor reduction and so on.

 

So the way you described it as "15% + (60% * .85) = 66%" would be wrong.

 

It would be 15% for the attack to miss, then if it doesn't there's a 60% chance to be shielded based off a 100% that went threw the first roll. Now it doesn't mean it would be a 75% mitigate to all attacks, it means that there's a total of a 75% chance to mitigate an attack, and only a 60% chance to mitigate and attack if the first 15% doesn't.

 

Im just trying to get a better understanding of the whole system no intention to troll or discredit , so if you have data off other sites or tests people have done I would love to see and read them.

I'm not saying it's a continuous roll. What you are laying out is what is what is being described by the math. What the math is showing is a two roll system. Where of all the rolls there could possibly be 15% are dodged, of the ones that are not dodged (the other 85% of attacks), you are applying your shield chance too.

Step 1: A 1000 ranged/melee attacks are launched at your character.

Step 2: Of those 1000 attacks you dodged 150 of them! Hooray!

Step 3: 850 Attacks are still coming your way!

Step 4: They've "hit" so now you apply your shield chance.

Step 5: Of the 850 attacks you shield 510 attacks. (60% of them)

150 Complete Dodges + 510 Shield attacks out of the 1000 attacks. Letting you mitigate 660 / 1000 = 66% of all the attacks. As my math said in the first thing. Not different, just a misunderstanding.