Paladin BiS Accessory Reddit Discussion

[CianaIezuborn]

I'm all for allocating all your character's Distributable Points into VIT, but being able to swap 25 Vit for 45 STR/DEX via easilly-unequippable accessories is a very nice trade in most endgame situations!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're going to sacrifice VIT for STR/DEX, this is the way to do it. 25 points for 90 points is extremely tempting and is the most efficient way to go about it. Especially compared to bonus points on a 1 to 1 ratio.

(i) STR/DEX equipment setups will be able to survive a greater amount of damage than +VIT setups (on average) before the healers start struggling to keep up with the incoming damage

That's the issue though, real world best case scenario on RNG neither tank dies. Real world average scenario, neither tank dies. That's because in both cases each tank has taken enough EHp to survive the predictable burst.

It's the increasingly worst case scenarios that EHp builds win out in. Strings of missed avoidance, healers mis-timing heals, melee dropping an ae on tank, and just plain old lag. In these scenarios you have a 100% chance for an extra 5% buffer vs a 1% chance at some buffer (lets just say an avoidance would be equivalent to that 5% buffer). Dirty math, but calculating specifics on the effects of avoidance in worst case scenarios is non trivial.

(ii) that for any HIGHER damage, STR/DEX setups will only possibly die more quickly than VIT setups. Because of their increased enmity generation allowing them to use delaying tactics (Stoneskin, Stuns, Kiting, etc) without putting any pressure on the rest of the team to lower their damage or healing output.

I can't make a clear connect between paper and practice so I can't really put an exact metric of value on it. Anecdotal I know, but I've never been in a situation where I've not been in such a lead on st damage that I haven't been able to afford to through out stoneskin/stuns whenever I've needed to. As far as kiting, that's pure flash cut spam, which I find the limiting factor to be mana versus a single AOEer (Double AOEers kill the mobs before breaking through enmity buffer)

There is a theoretical edge case where that 1% avoidance would beat out EHP where the incoming damage vs healing would keep the Avoidance tank 100% on average and drain the EHp tank 1% per second. I can't think of a method in which this could happen though where both tanks didn't have a chance of dieing from bad RNG or where both tanks could live with proper use of cooldowns.

When you look at it from the point of view of worst case scenario your EHp increases your tolerance to horrible situations where as your Avoidance reduces the frequency of such horrible situations.

I'll reiterate, if you're over-geared and in no danger of dieing to an encounter, stick on DPS gear, switch to sword oath, go nuts. But I can't think of any situation where I'd be like "This boss keeps killing me, time to drop 5% HP for 1% avoidance reduction".

I was on the other side of this debate about a year ago in Rift where I was arguing for a 20% increase to AHp over a .1% drop in EHp due to the huge amount of raw avoidance and hp. That's the type of hardcore EHP all the HP folks I've run into in the past. I'm all for including avoidance in the equation, but for me the cut off point isn't anywhere near where it is in this game. I'd have to see at least EHp over the reasonable burst and then double the % AHP gain over % EHP loss to consider it for purely tanking reasons.

Finally, this may seem like heated debate, but I have the uptmost respect for Mael and the theorycrafting he's done for the Pal community. I just figure after a few back and forth posts that had to be said =p