Paladin BiS Accessory Reddit Discussion

[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.