Paladin BiS Accessory Reddit Discussion

[Maelwys]

I won't argue against the DPS/threat benefits. While I disagree that more threat is ever required, and that DPS should not be your primary focus, these are play style choices that I leave up to my follow PLDs to decide on. I just want to make the numbers clear, and they aren't as attractive as you seem to have thought.

Your block and parry rates are off.

585 Parry and 234 Dex, with a +1 Relic or Allagan Shield is substantially higher than a "16% block and 20% parry rate" - due to the DODGE -> BLOCK -> PARRY ordering, Block and Parry chances are close to identical, with a slight edge to Block. And those stats give a much higher Parry and Block chance.

You go from:

~361 STR and 189 Dex to ~406 and ~234 Dex, whilst losing a tiny amount of raw parry and acc. That crosses not one, but TWO Str tiers.

That's rising from 23% parry and 25% block strength to 25% parry and 27% block strength, whilst raising both parry block and parry rate by around 1%. If we take the reduced raw parry from gear into account and err on the side of caution, let's call this a 0.6% boost in rate... (realistically, I suspect that it'll probably be closer to 0.8%, but whatever).

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If you cross two STR tiers (as above), it'd be:

~23% block rate at 25% strength = 5.75% damage mitigated
~23% parry rate at 23% strength = 5.29% damage mitigated
Total = 11.04% damage mitigated over time from Block/Parry.

~23.6% block rate at 27% strength = 6.372% damage mitigated
~23.6% parry rate at 25% strength = 5.9% damage mitigated
Total = 12.272% damage mitigated over time from Block/Parry.

= An extra 1.232 percent of damage mitigated.

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If you cross only one STR tier, it'd be:

~23% block rate at 25% strength = 5.75% damage mitigated
~23% parry rate at 23% strength = 5.29% damage mitigated
Total = 11.04% damage mitigated over time from Block/Parry.

~23.6% block rate at 26% strength = 6.136% damage mitigated
~23.6% parry rate at 24% strength = 5.664% damage mitigated
Total = 11.8% damage mitigated over time from Block/Parry.

= An extra 0.76 percent of damage mitigated.

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So you can see that we're left with either a little over or a little under a baseline figure of ~1% additional mitigation versus non-magic damage. (Not counting any benefits to Bulwark).
That is a direct trade for ~5% HP, which is a damage "buffer" and NOT damage "reduction".

The difference between "buffer" and "reduction" is important, because whilst both increase your survivability, the effectiveness of the first vanishes whenever you start relying on heals to survive (as long as you can't be one-shot). What's better: Getting hit for 1000 damage and being Healed for 1000, or getting hit for 990 damage and being Healed for 1000? Reduction mitigation simply scales much better than Max HP as long as you aren't being one-shot, that's why PLDs are (currently, until patch 2.1!) better mitigation tanks than WARs.

[Jahaudant]

My apologies.

Using those numbers it's 49 EHP vs 373 EHP making VIT 7.6 times better.

You realise that your argument is based on your healer having to cure for exactly 49 HP less for every 6447 damage you take? It's mind blowing. You cannot argue that melded Gryph accessories are better for survivability than Hero/Allagan, you simply cannot. It's not true. It will never be true. You are delusional if you think it's true. Stop telling people it's true. Good lord.

[Maelwys]

You realise that your argument is based on your healer having to cure for exactly 49 HP less for every 6447 damage you take? It's mind blowing. You cannot argue that melded Gryph accessories are better for survivability than Hero/Allagan, you simply cannot. It's not true. It will never be true. You are delusional if you think it's true. Stop telling people it's true. Good lord.

My argument is that your healer having to heal you 1% less often is better than you having an extra 5% HP buffer which never actually gets used.

eHP is IRRELEVANT to this.

(In the situations we are talking about above, the endgame-i90'ed PLDs already have so much HP that the extra boost from 25 VIT ends up doing nothing. In THOSE cases, 1% reduction beats +5% HP)

[JBar]

(In the situations we are talking about above, the endgame-i90'ed PLDs already have so much HP that the extra boost from 25 VIT ends up doing nothing. In THOSE cases, 1% reduction beats +5% HP)

You guys are doing a great job of trying to figure out BiS - and I commend you for that. I just wish all of the people on these forums wouldn't get so worked up about conversations. It seriously DOESN'T MATTER for any of this content. Some people want to find BiS for the sake of finding BiS. It's not like there is currently any content that you NEED this for. I had gryphonskin and have since re purposed them for my monk that is approaching 50. Why? It seriously just doesn't matter. Period. So can everyone take a chill pill and just talk? No one said you HAVE to go out and buy gryphonskin to be relevant. This is all theoretical stuff about pushing the boundaries for those who enjoy that kind of thing. So play nice mmmmmmkay

[Maelwys]

It seriously DOESN'T MATTER for any of this content.

Agree wholeheartedly.

BIS builds are about pushing out that tiny tiny almost unnoticable bit of extra performance in exchange for for insane investments via time/money.

This thread is simply theorycrafting for the sake of theorycrafting, and in practice nobody in their right mind should really care whether a tank is using one accessory or another, providing that they can (i) survive and (ii) hold hate.

That said, at the extreme upper end of the bell curve there's a very small part of the community (in their "right mind" or not!) that is constantly trying to do faster and faster and faster runs. Or try odd setups, like 3-manning HM Titan. Trying to show what's at the outer limits of the "possible". That's the only real place you'd notice this kind of stuff.

[CianaIezuborn]

Avoidance and HP along with the ratios of available Avoidance to VIT are still far to low to put any stock into Avoidance over Vitality for tanking purposes.

Using Mael's numbers for avoidance posted above, ignoring def/mdef/shield oath as they will multiply both results by the same ratio:

Full Gryphonskin
EHP: 6447
~23.6% block rate at 27% strength = 6.372% damage mitigated
~23.6% parry rate at 25% strength = 5.9% damage mitigated
11.8961% average reduction from avoidance if two rolls
AHP: 7317
12.272% average reduction from avoidance if one roll
AHP: 7349

Full i90
EHP: 6820
~23% block rate at 25% strength = 5.75% damage mitigated
~23% parry rate at 23% strength = 5.29% damage mitigated
10.735825% average reduction from avoidance if two rolls
AHP: 7640
11.04% average reduction from avoidance if one roll
AHP: 7666

Even on average taking in account Avoidance, the VIT heavy build survives longer. Again the issue is that current gear set just doesn't have enough VIT or enough avoidance to make avoidance even close.

BiS does and doesn't matter. If you want to make things as smooth as you possibly can for the current tier then yes it helps a bit. The bigger picture is figuring out and gearing to bis of this tier will give you a leg up when the next tier is released.

Once again, STR for dps increase? Go for it. But don't delude yourself into thinking you're improving your survivability over stacking VIT.

[Maelwys]

Avoidance and HP along with the ratios of available Avoidance to VIT are still far to low to put any stock into Avoidance over Vitality for tanking purposes.

AHP

I'm going to try explaining this just one last time.
Because people are STILL using mechanics such as "eHP" and "aHP" to argue this case.

I can appreciate that if we look at 'survivability' solely in terms of how much damage you can withstand going from 100% HP to 0% HP, then VIT is the clear winner.
That is what "Effective HP" is about, and is NOT what I'm contesting.

What I'm referring to is raising the "immortality point" of the party

Let me explain...

There are three possible scenarios when tanking:

(i) Tank is not dead, and is taking damage at a rate that is manageable by the healer.
(ii) Tank is not dead, and is taking damage at a rate BEYOND what is manageable by the healer.
(iii) Tank is dead.

STR/DEX Tanks last a tiny bit longer in scenario (i). They can take a tiny bit more damage before the healer starts becoming overwhelmed.

VIT Tanks last slightly longer in scenario (ii). Their higher HP pool means the enemy has to spend more time hitting them in order to reduce their HP bar to 0 if damage taken outstrips healing received.

This would point largely in the favour of VIT tanks were it not for one simple point: scenario (ii) is very rare in-game once you hit very high gear levels.

With a good healer, you should very rarely (if ever) hit the point of crossing over from scenario (i) to scenario (ii).
This means that for nearly all current content, once a Tank hits a certain Maximum HP threshold, adding any more HP is largely pointless.

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A Tank needs just enough HP to be able to withstand the highest level of spike damage that can be received between heals. Once this level of HP is achieved, any HP above that level is superfluous to performance - you only want a larger "buffer" of HP in order to compensate for a delay in healing (Healer reaction time, server lag, etc) or for "unforeseen emergencies" where something happens to make incoming damage rise.

This is where STR/DEX tanks shine. They receive the same amount of healing as VIT tanks but reduce the incoming damage slightly better - meaning that whilst neither tank would likely be in any real danger of dying, the Healer can spend slightly less time healing the STR/DEX tank than the VIT tank. This helps the healer conserve a bit more MP and/or occasionally frees up a Global cooldown for them to use another ability. it also very slightly raises the time it takes for a Tank to go from Scenario (i) to scenario (ii), which means that a STR/DEX Tank will be able to survive a bit more punishment before the party starts getting into difficulties, but if they DO start getting into difficulties, they'll die slightly faster than a VIT tank.

Now combine this with the fact that STR/DEX tanks will do more damage and therefore generate much more hate than VIT tanks - which gives the entire party slightly more leeway to overheal or do more DPS, and also gives the Tank an opportunity to occasionally take a break from generating maximum enmity in order to use abilities which increase their own damage mitigation (e.g Stoneskin). The difference between Tanks in scenario (ii) actually starts to blur a LOT... because (for example) if the STR/DEX tank manages to get one extra Stoneskin off then they'd effectively have +10% HP to the VIT tank's +5%.

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TL;DR:
Question: Is your Tank dying? (being one-shot doesn't count)
Answer: No --> Then technically they have more VIT than they need and it would be slightly better for the party if they stacked more STR and DEX instead.
Answer: Yes --> Then they might die slightly more slowly if they stack VIT.

[Soulburn32]

you guys really care way to much about this.......

the only time this Bis should even matter is after you have full i90 in every slot or if you are picking between 2 pieces of gear to spend your myth on and even then it would be arguable if you could even tell the difference between them.

[Exstal]

So in future patches, I'm sure SE won't make the same silly mistake like making DPS accessories even remotely comparable to something 20 item levels higher.