Warrior MT at a disadvantage in O3S?

[Ekimmak]

This post contains a lot of maths, thoerycrafting, and maintanking by someone that has had zero success with Savage drops.

So, as someone who has been trying and failing to clear Omega 3 Savage for the last two weeks, I've gotten a good feeling for the fight. And if anyone remembers my post on O1s, you'll know that the percentage based attack there can cause one of your own cooldowns to backfire on you.

But from my experience maintanking this, I felt like I had to watch out for certain mechanics, as they had a very real risk of killing me just like a tankbuster. I had a feeling in my gut that WAR needed to be a lot more careful compared with the other tanks, and so ran some theorycrafting calculations to see if it's true.

From my current gear level, and the numbers rounded off to estimates for easy calculations, this is what I find.

My health is 51000. The boss hits for 17000 on a critical auto attack. Queen's Waltz in the Library phase will deal damage equal to 50% of your maximum health.

First, for DRK and PLD, they can use their tankstance to get a natural 20% damage reduction. So:

Book: 51000*0.5 = 25500
Auto: 17000*0.8 = 13600
Book+Auto = 39100
Remaining HP: 51000 - 39100 = 11900 (23%)

Now we run it with WAR, whose tankstance doesn't increase damage reduction, instead it gives them bonus health. For me, it's roughly 61200 HP.

Book: 61200*0.5 = 30600
Auto: 17000 (hits for full damage)
Book+Auto = 47600
Remaining HP: 61200 - 47699 = 13600 (22%)

That's a very slight numerical disadvantage, but not something worth writing home about. But then I realised something... This is time that the healers often spend scrambling to get to their far tiles. She might be working in a second auto-attack.

A crit here is lethal for any tank, and extremely unlikely, so I'll just make it two auto-attacks. I've seen the damage for me under Inner Beast hit for a bit more than 10K, so that's the number I'll work with.

For PLD and DRK:

Auto: 10K
Book+2Auto: 25500 + 2*10000 = 45500
Remaining HP: 51000 - 45500 = 5500 (10.8%)

I see Auto-attacks hitting me for a bit more than 13K outside of inner beast, so that's the number I'll use.
For WAR:

Auto: 13K
Book+2Auto: 30600 + 2*13000 = 56600
Remaining HP: 61200 - 56600 = 4600 (7.5%)

That's a far more significant difference. Because the Book Drop deals damage exactly equal to 50% of max HP, the tank whose defence IS to have more HP gets hit harder. Although, I'll admit I don't recall seeing my HP dip this far, so I'm betting that the first set of calculations are the better example.

Now, all of that said, there's one more thing to throw a wrinkle into this: her queen's waltz + holy spellblade combo. The red marker is ironically easier, because it gives a defence buff against her auto-attack, but the stack markers give magic defence, meaning the cut by 50% hp on top of the stack marker damage leaves her in a very good place to kill the maintank. Not helping is that the healers are silenced until after the book drop damage hits, so any heal casts will go off after her auto-attack, assuming they didn't all go to the other side of the room.

I don't recall the damage from that off the top of my head, and I can't make sense of parsers to find it out, but I can do some theory crafting based on it being something you'd want to use cooldowns for.

WAR would use Thrill of Battle, being an immediate heal and bonus to HP. It has the odd position of being the only cooldown that's reduced effectiveness by the books, but at the same time mitigates the books. Maybe being used after would be better, but I don't like the timing, I think Hally starts closing the distance before the books hit (and remove the Out of Action debuff).

Ideally, PLD would use Sheltron to further mitigate the damage, but I'm looking at a worst case scenario where she crits her auto, so that and Bulwark are out of the picture. Rampart has a pretty swift cooldown, so in that position, I'd use that.

DRK is in a good spot. The Blackest Night gives a 20% shield, effectively 20% more HP, but without raising the damage taken from the books. Whether it bypasses or not, that's an excellent bonus, hampered only if the books adjust their damage to break the shield AND drop hp by 50% (if this happens, can a DRK tell me, please)

So:
Auto on PLD: 17000 * 0.8 * 0.8 = 10880
Book on WAR: 61200 * 1.2 * 0.5 = 36720

With that out of the way, we get the following (with War2 trading out ToB for rampart):
Book+Auto (PLD): 25500 + 10880 = 36380 (71% of health)
Book+Auto (WAR): 36720 + 17000 = 53720 (73% of health)
Book+Auto (DRK): 25500 + 13600 = 39100 (63% of health)
Book+Auto (War2): 30600 + 13600 = 44200 (72% of health)

DRK get to keep more of their health due to the shield, but it boils down to Warrior having a significantly rougher time of this fight, thanks to all the damage based off your HP.

Was there a point to all this? Not really. Did I mess up due to mixing hard numbers with vaguely remembered ones? Quite possible. Could I just use a cooldown to mitigate it and save some hassle? Yeah, probably. Should healers pay more attention to the MT during these parts? I'm not going to tell them how to do their job.

I'm just pointing out that with a slow shift towards giving bosses access to fixed percentage damage, they need to take into account how it affects WAR tanking.

[SyzzleSpark]

IIRC, the books ignore shielding. I've tried to TBN the books before, I can't remember it ever working (no blood). In fact I'm pretty sure they ignore all mitigation, otherwise you could screw up the mechanic and live which I have never seen happen. I.E. all tanks lose the same percentage of their max HP no matter what, so no I don't think WAR is at a disadvantage. A DRK/PLD in tank stance with 50K HP will take 25K, not 20K, and likewise, a WAR in Defiance with 70K HP will take 35K, not 28K. The fact that you take more damage in Defiance and with ToB than you would without just means it is ignoring the mitigation of those abilities just as it ignores Grit/ShO, TBN, etc. If it did any less than 50% of whatever your max HP is that would mean that ToB or Defiance would be mitigating that damage, which would actually give WAR an unfair advantage. Basically, no matter what tank you are playing, 2 books = dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AqnmgNq7mU - in this video, @ 4:45, the DRK takes 29100 damage from the book. Immediately after this, he gets a Bole from the AST. Later, after picking up the panda, he has Grit turned on, and the bole is still ticking, and the 2nd book hits him again for 29100 damage. Yet again, @ 5:52, he has Grit off, the Bole is still up, but he now has a shield from the AST. The book hits him for 29100 damage once again and leaves the shield completely untouched.

Have you actually tanked O3S on the other two tanks? Its not any easier, trust me.

If anything, its less about what tank you bring in that fight and more about who gets stuck OTing, as MTing O3S is very easy.

If you want to talk about advantages, WAR can holmgang every other buster and Vengeance+Awareness the rest, and still have more than half their CDs to cover Deliverance tanking.

As a DRK in O3S with Grit off, I am completely naked throughout the fight outside of TBN casts as I need Rampart and TBN for every buster, while alternating Shadow Wall and Awareness every other one PLD probably needs to do something similar (Rampart/Shel for every one, alternate Awareness and Sentinel). They can use LD/Hallowed but likely only once/twice, so its not really a part of a rotation, just a one and done.

The percentage based damage always ignores mitigation so it doesn't affect WAR any differently than the other tanks. You take more damage but have more HP, same as every other scenario in the game.

[Dizzy_Derp]

The math is all wrong, war has the advantage in every salvage fight for the times they have the boss because They have the most cds and if your doing savage your tank stance uptime should be lower that 5%. If it's more than that you should consider just staying in 1 and 2 since they aren't really savage to learn how to tank properly at that level. if your a way your only in it for 1 gcd because all your doing is tomohawk>equilibrium>deliverance
Another issue I see is that you appear to be actually solo tanking this and never swapping with your co tank, don't do that. If you co tank wants to be a bum kick him and find a decent one or leave.

[Galactimus]

Cleared this yesterday as a PLD MT with no swaps. I can say that auto attacks are the worst part of this fight for me (that and maybe the fractions of seconds she gives you to re-position her somewhere.)

If you have a Paladin as your offtank get them to Divine Veil that book mechanic. There's a raidwide AoE just before the book debuffs; plenty of time to proc the effect. As Paladin MT I use Rampart during those books (and last phase mindjack auto attacks.) Otherwise I'm down to 1k hp or dead. Bulwark + Awareness, Sentinel, and Hallowed were always available for her Critical Hit's. Rampart for the Ninja's + Intervention for the offtank during Iron Giant.

Another issue I see is that you appear to be actually solo tanking this and never swapping with your co tank, don't do that. If you co tank wants to be a bum kick him and find a decent one or leave.

Not sure why people are so adamant about tank swapping this fight. I never run out of cooldowns and we had 20 seconds to spare before enrage. Sure MT will end the fight around 2300 DPS but that lets the OT push much higher.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

Unforced swapping in O3S is kind of a wash honestly, because the OT has to tank almost as much crap as the MT does, and the adds hit much harder much more often. So you're not actually gonna get much more mileage in terms of CDs by swapping as one tank is still going to need theirs for the adds, which is the whole point of unforced swapping as it allows you to recover shared CDs to give each tank more room to tank in DPS stance. In a fight where the OT's CDs would go unused, this makes sense, but in O3S, they don't.

[Ekimmak]

I can't take any other tanks in. I've only gotten WAR to 70, and although my DRK alt is at 70, can't get them into Savage due to lower iLevel.

In the end, I wanted to see if there was a direct disadvantage, or if it was just me not being as good at it as I should be. If it breaks the shield, reduces HP by 50%, and doesn't give blood, then the book waltz is fairly unfriendly towards DRK, but if it's just ignoring the shield, DRK is in a good place, because the shield helps protect against the follow up auto-attack, which is a very real threat in most groups I'm in. Heck, they could just apply it immediately after the books, which is what I should be doing with the books, but I don't like my ping times.

I just feel like there's something about the fight that's against warrior, and that's the thing that causes the third most grief for me. The other two are granite phase reapers (which is all on me), holy spellblade markers on the MT, and those books. Does having 10% more health (120% health cut in half) than other tanks make up for not having a 20% mitigation of her auto-attack?

I have two very unfortunate problems, in that my "static" is only partly formed, and that our final run of the week is on Sunday. So, I can't rely on knowing who my co-tank is, or how efficient they'll be playing, and the most practice I get is in the bitter final runs of the week. All I can do is improve myself, and so if that means I have to stay in tank stance for the fight, then so be it. Haven't been able to see the enrage, so my personal DPS isn't an issue yet.

It's easy to say "healers should do better and focus heal at these parts". But I'd rather be proactive, and figure out if there's a way I can improve, or if the class overall needs to be improved.

[SyzzleSpark]

It's easy to say "healers should do better and focus heal at these parts". But I'd rather be proactive, and figure out if there's a way I can improve, or if the class overall needs to be improved.

You're referring to the basic and age-old disadvantage of Defiance which is present in all content and that is that it is only functional while being healed or when you are at full health. If you are in Defiance however, you have IB, and WAR's mitigation kit smokes the other two tanks'. Your mitigation suite has insane uptime and is completely costless with the exception of IB, which is really only there (along with Equilibrium) to make Defiance's aforementioned disadvantages largely moot. An unpopped TBN after the books will still mitigate AAs if it lasts long enough (remember TBN is only 5 seconds, in fact if you pop TBN immediately prior to the books you're almost certain to have just wasted 1/4 of your mana), but so will ToB, technically, since you will still be left with more HP to take those AAs.

Assume a DRK/PLD and WAR that are all in tank stance and at full HP when the book hits. They all have 50K HP at base. 50K HP in Defiance is 62500. Assume also that they take a 15K AA after the book.

DRK/PLD: 50000/2 = 25000, 25000 - (15000*0.8) = 13000
WAR: 62500/2 = 31250, 31250 - 15000 = 16250

13000 is 26% of 50000, and 16250 is 26% of 62500.

So, every tank got left with the same percentage of their maximum HP remaining after eating a book+AA.

So the job is not at a disadvantage.

[Ekimmak]

You're referring to the basic and age-old disadvantage of Defiance which is present in all content and that is that it is only functional while being healed or when you are at full health. If you are in Defiance however, you have IB, and WAR's mitigation kit smokes the other two tanks'. Your mitigation suite has insane uptime and is completely costless with the exception of IB, which is really only there (along with Equilibrium) to make Defiance's aforementioned disadvantages largely moot. An unpopped TBN after the books will still mitigate AAs if it lasts long enough (remember TBN is only 5 seconds), but so will ToB, technically, since you will still be left with more HP to take those AAs.

Fair enough. Inner Beast doesn't help when Spellblade +books hits, since it needs me to be standing on next to the boss to use, but it's a minor gripe compared with DRK's overall DCDs.

I probably do need to just "man up and get good". But with servers down, this is all I can do. Run some calculations, and see what other people on the forums say.

[Dizzy_Derp]

Unforced swapping in O3S is kind of a wash honestly, because the OT has to tank almost as much crap as the MT does, and the adds hit much harder much more often. So you're not actually gonna get much more mileage in terms of CDs by swapping as one tank is still going to need theirs for the adds, which is the whole point of unforced swapping as it allows you to recover shared CDs to give each tank more room to tank in DPS stance. In a fight where the OT's CDs would go unused, this makes sense, but in O3S, they don't.

It's the furthest thing from a wash in 3. You should be swapping on adds to use invulns and in last phase it's pretty important to force swaps. Either way advantage goes to war.

[Ekimmak]

It's the furthest thing from a wash in 3. You should be swapping on adds to use invulns and in last phase it's pretty important to force swaps. Either way advantage goes to war.

You think so? Not sarcastic, I'm genuinely curious to know why tankswaps should be used for adds. Nobody on my server ever talks about having tankswaps.

The timing for my own cooldowns as MT works fine, Holmgang one Critical Tankbuster, then Rampart+Awareness the next. Alternate as needed.

For offtanking against adds, it's Vengeance + Inner beast against White Flame, Rampart + Inner Beast against Dragon, Vengeance + RI against Apanda, and I've reached the ninja+iron giant adds so few times I don't know what I'd normally do.

I don't see why you'd need to tankswap.