Paladin BiS Accessory Reddit Discussion

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Maqaqa]

Its pretty much the only gear that a crafter can sell... and better than having one set of gear good for everything and mandatory.
If we discussed for ten pages... then it means the two sets are pretty well balanced!

[TaneshimaPopura]

Maelwys put it best. You cannot just see everything based on a fixed point of view. You need to factor in external factors and internal factors. The fact that going STR/DEX build makes each point healed more effective, gives you leeway in Enmity generation to Heal/Stoneskin, more power to your Inner Beast/Bloodsurge and making your Bulwark in to a more dependable CD.

Sure without external aid Vit is king. But you can't put a finger on things like snap threat, cause if you let someone pull aggro and take a hit that is already a lot of eHP/heal loss cause the healer has to heal someone else other than you that is unforeseen. Tell me the times when your Flash didn't generate enough enmity against that crit streak BLM or that time when an ambush mob came out and your healer just threw a big heal on you and had more overheal ticks incoming. How many times have you killed a mob faster and reduce that incoming damage that you can't reliably gauge it's damage? These are factors that should not be overlooked.

The fact that eHP Vit is king is true but eHP works only when there is no heal and where spike damage is involved to a certain extend. Outside that you'd want to depend on eHP/heal which is not what Vit provide. Then to top it all with more potential enmity is just an icing on the cake, don't be so tunnel visioned as to see our point is directed only to increase tank DPS.

[Exstal]

Its pretty much the only gear that a crafter can sell... and better than having one set of gear good for everything and mandatory.
If we discussed for ten pages... then it means the two sets are pretty well balanced!

It should make sense that i90 crafted comparable to i90 dropped but i70 compared to i90? Something is wrong with this. They'll either make i80 crafted somehow worse than i70 or i100 is going to make i90 look like you've just started playing.

[CianaIezuborn]

...

Here's the issue:

You're trying to lump in chance based mitigation with static based mitigation.

They aren't the same, over a long period of time (which is what avoidance based damage reductions rely on) static based mitigation will NEVER fail you and avoidance based mitigation will ALWAYS fail you at least once.

There is no situation where you have two tanks with equal static mitigation (DEF/MDEF/Shield Oath/technically heal% buffs though that's out of scope) and the same amount of constant healing coming in but differing avoidance rates that one will always die and one will always live.

They will either both always live or they will both always have a chance to die.

Luckily healing isn't a constant thing, healers are able to throw burst healing to match with the ebb and flow of damage. At this point avoidance and additional hp are providing the same advantage in different ways, they are reducing the stress on the human factor. Avoidance helps lower the frequency of the flows, while HP increases the amount of time a healer has to react to each flow.

AHp is a metric used to figure this and is the only reasonable one that has been determined to examine the effects of avoidance in simplified terms. By checking the figures I posted above, it's easy to see that there's a vast improvement in AHp by stacking VIT over Avoidance in current gear. This isn't to say that avoidance is bad, it's that HP and Avoidance levels in current gear sets are so low currently, that VIT is severely outweighing avoidance in AHp calculations.

As VIT and Avoidance both rise, Avoidance has the possibility of creeping up on VIT in value due to the fact that linear VIT gains increase AHP linearly, while linear Avoidance gains increase AHP exponentially.

But until AHP gains more from stacking Avoidance gear over VIT gear, there's no argument. You are becoming less tanky by doing so.

...

Again though, if your intention is to do more DPS/Enmity then yeah stack DPS stats.