VIT and STR accessories

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Originally Posted by Lothar808

In dungeons ... Shield + STR for trash, Shield + VIT if your healer is new.

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Eww please no. The opposite is closer to accurate, and even then it's still highly subject to context. If your team is new, then DPS is probably low and the healer isn't DPS'ing, in which case Str + Sword for all those single packs you're doing. If your team is not new, you'll be pulling many mobs at a time -- please don't gimp your HP in order to buff your Flashes and Overpowers while the WHM is Holy'ing. Every GCD he wastes healing you amounts to more damage lost than you can put out in the same timeframe.

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Originally Posted by stoxastic

If you have 10K HP and take 5K damage, your healers will needs to heal 5K. If you have 8K HP and take 5K damage, your healers will still need to heal 5K. The damage is the same and was not mitigated. VIT is not mitigation.

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While VIT isn't "mitigation" per se, if you took 5k and then a crit auto for 3k you would be on the floor dead, whereas with 10k health you would have 2k health left. This is sort of the idea of reaching the VIT cap for X content, that VIT cap is technically a form of mitigation - if you don't reach it, you won't have the cushion HP to live comfortably from the big hits, and you'll die. So you're not reducing damage outright but you're reducing the chance that you'll fall flat on the floor. I don't recommend stacking excess VIT, but it's a good form of "mitigation" for bad healers.

This forum is one big circle jerk of DPS oriented tanks. To put it simply, maxing out ilevel of your left side gear is top priority (while keeping ACC requirements for your desired content. don\\\\\\'t worry about the other secondaries, that\\\\\\'s stuff not even theorycrafters can agree on or even fully understand). Gear and spend your stat points on VIT until you are comfortable in the content you\\\\\\'re doing. Countless times I\\\\\\'ve seen new tanks pull entire hallways in expert dungeons having less HP than a bard.

Once you think you\\\\\\'re doing pretty well, see how far you can push your DPS by taking points out of VIT and into STR using Keepers Hymns, these are really cheap and the most effective way to change your stats around.

If you\\\\\\'re doing good with full STR spec and want even more DPS, start swapping those VIT accessories out for STR ones. Accessories should be the last thing you spend tomes on and the last thing you change about your gearing decision.

I run two sets of gear which I swap out regularly on any one dungeon run depending on the situation: amount of mobs pulled, dps of the party, skill of the healer, etc.

However, I ran full VIT for quite some time before hand and rarely had complaints. Just make sure your using sword oath and shield oath correctly then when you feel more comfortable and the party is stable start swapping out vit pieces for str pieces.

I run full str quite often ( and yes I do have less HP than some of my dps), but I have a trusted healer and i cycle my CD's efficiently so that he can still holy.

There is almost no reason to go straight to str gear when your still gearing up. Get your armor and wep first then worry about min/maxing the left side.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

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You're misusing the term mitigation. Mitigation means a decrease of damage taken, not "how much HP is left afterwards". VIT does not decrease any damage, it simply increases your HP.

Strength increases your mitigation by increasing the amount of damage reduced when you block or parry.
Parry increases your mitigation by increasing the rate at which you parry attacks.
Skill Speed increases a WARs mitigation by increasing how quickly they can re-up Inner Beast.

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Originally Posted by Zaft

You're misusing the term mitigation. Mitigation means a decrease of damage taken, not "how much HP is left afterwards". VIT does not decrease any damage, it simply increases your HP.

Strength increases your mitigation by increasing the amount of damage reduced when you block or parry.
Parry increases your mitigation by increasing the rate at which you parry attacks.
Skill Speed increases a WARs mitigation by increasing how quickly they can re-up Inner Beast.

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No, you're misunderstanding the breadth of what mitigation truly is. You're ignoring exactly half of what I said in my previous post. I quoted, almost verbatim, the literal definition of "mitigation" in terms of the English Language and applied it precisely to game mechanics. What you are trying to pass off as the entirety of mitigation is just Damage Reduction. It's only part of the process of mitigating an attack. Here is the simplest way mitigation can be defined:

An attack has been "mitigated" if it fails to kill you.

There are two major ways to prevent an attack from killing you. The first is Damage Reduction: the act of making the red number smaller. The second is simply having enough HP to take the hit.

To continue on, Damage Reduction is just an illusion. It is exactly equivalent to and can thus be abstracted down to having more HP. That 1000 point shield on you isn't reducing the strength of the enemy's attack; it's giving you 1000 more health. Sitting in Shield Oath isn't reducing the enemy's strength; it's increasing your maximum HP by 20%. Defiance and Thrill of Battle, bless their hearts, skip this illusion and just increase your visible HP number. Every skill that imparts Damage Reduction is just increasing your HP. Therefore, if we assume that possessing more HP is not mitigation, Damage Reduction isn't mitigation either and we can conclude that we aren't ever mitigating anything at all. This, of course, is a fallacy due to the previously stated definitions of a mitigated attack being less severe/unable to kill you and the fact that failing to reduce the severity of attacks will kill you.

At the end of the day, HP is mitigation. In fact, it's the only mitigation we have.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

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The dictionary definition of mitigation and the video game definition of mitigation (damage mitigation) are very different. Here's a quote from WoW to help you understand:

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Mitigation is the reduction of attack effectiveness. Types of melee and magical spell mitigation are absorb, armor, block, defense, resilience and resistance.

Not to be confused with avoidance, which includes such stats as dodge, miss and parry.

The crucial difference between the two being that an attack that is mitigated still does damage to the player, however an avoided attack deals no damage.

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What you're arguing in your fourth paragraph is eHP, which is an equation that factors in mitigation to determine the effective hit points you have. This is not the same as mitigation. To calculate eHP, you would use eHP = HP / (1 - mitigation / 100), and you cannot take block/parry/etc into account, as these are not constants.

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Originally Posted by Zaft

The dictionary definition of mitigation and the video game definition of mitigation (damage mitigation) are very different...

...What you're arguing in your fourth paragraph is eHP, which is an equation that factors in mitigation to determine the effective hit points you have. This is not the same as mitigation. To calculate eHP, you would use eHP = HP / (1 - mitigation / 100), and you cannot take block/parry/etc into account, as these are not constants.

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Actually, the two definitions are the same. Making an attack less severe is exactly the same as making an attack less effective. It's just trading two synonyms. A Warrior of all people should know that all attacks are less effective against you if you have more HP. The effectiveness of an attack isn't the size of the red number; it's the attack's ability to kill you if you're hit by it.

Because damage reduction is equivalent to having more HP, claiming that one is mitigation and that the other is not is a contradiction. It's basic logic.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Because damage reduction is equivalent to having more HP, claiming that one is mitigation and that the other is not is a contradiction. It's basic logic.

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If the damage is received at 100% of its intended value then no damage has been mitigated. Just because you have more health, the damage may be less severe, and you can incorrectly use the word mitigated, but you never really mitigated any damage at it was received in full. You just have more hp to absorb the full value of damage.

I take 1k hit with no mitigation I lose 1k health. Mitigation allows you to reduce the amount of damage received.
I use sentinel, take a 800 damage, 20% of the hit was mitigated.

both of those combined is our eHP. HP/(1- (mitigation/100)) eHP is the combination of both hp and mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Actually, the two definitions are the same. Making an attack less severe is exactly the same as making an attack less effective. It's just trading two synonyms. A Warrior of all people should know that all attacks are less effective against you if you have more HP. The effectiveness of an attack isn't the size of the red number; it's the attack's ability to kill you if you're hit by it.

Because damage reduction is equivalent to having more HP, claiming that one is mitigation and that the other is not is a contradiction. It's basic logic.

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From the healers point of view, the mitigated attacks (if we take that to mean attacks causing less damage due to parry, block or defensive buffs like Inner Beast) will mean less damage to heal. However, that may be irrelevant in many cases, and not actually = saved mp - for example, the healer will cure 2 after a big hit and put the tank around max HP in either case (VIT or STR build).

The extra VIT will help prevent one hit KO's where a tank was not topped up before big hits, the defensive buffs were missed, the boss follows up with a second attack soon after big hit. For that reason I would say, in theory VIT is the safer option for fights with big hit attacks.

In dungeons where you're doing bug pulls, the STR build (mitigation) could be better in theory, even defensively. As a WHM, during big mob pulls I'll often rely on regen while I holy spam. With VIT builds, HP would be higher, but in theory would shoot down quicker. For warriors in particular the STR not only provides higher mitigation for all the small hit's, but greater self healing potential with Bloodbath (returns some damage dealt as HP), Berserk (Increase damage dealt by 50%), and Overpower (hitting all enemies to maximise overall damage / healing), in combination with other defensive and offensive buffs and self healing abilities. STR also will help with keeping emnity, and killing enemies faster which also equates to mitigation (shorter fight means less hits and less likely to run out of buffs, etc). It's hard to say without testing whether the damage gained with STR would be greater than the damage lost IF a healer would need to stop dpsing earlier / more often.

I can't speak from experience with different builds, but I can understand the theory behind STR build vs VIT and would not rule out either until I tried it myself.

To be honest it's not that important which is better (unless you care about maximising). React to issues you experience first hand and make you own choices. For example, while levelling up I struggled to keep aggro. Could have been my gear at the time or my skill / execution. I put my bonus attribute points into STR for the rest of the levels and found it much easier to keep aggro. I've not found I die too much from big boss one shots, so the STR point stay for now until I have issues.