Shelltron and critical attacks.

[Shurrikhan]

Sheltron is amazing, and is on par with two personal CDs since you can stack 100 gauge for it. It's not static like a cooldown like Camo, you can plan the two charges for two different things.

A second charge, which does not increase uptime or mitigation over time, is of equal value to an entire second ability, which not only provides the same flexibility and short-term coverage as the second charge but also increases uptime and mitigation over time?

Sheltron's tradeoff is that as the expansion goes on it will get strictly better at blocking most damage than other on-demand cooldowns, because block strength will likely get to the point where it mitigates about 25%.

And... how is it going to do that when Block Strength is capped at that of the Ronkan shield (20% mitigation, which also happens to waste Block and Parry chance and is nullified by crits)?

[Kabooa]

And... how is it going to do that when Block Strength is capped at that of the Ronkan shield (20% mitigation, which also happens to waste Block and Parry chance and is nullified by crits)?

While it doesn't help the critical bypass, there is also no guarantee that shield strength won't increase - only that it will not vary within a tier itself.

[Shurrikhan]

While it doesn't help the critical bypass, there is also no guarantee that shield strength won't increase - only that it will not vary within a tier itself.

True. I guess I was assuming overmuch, since it seems remarkably poor design to specifically make a tank weaker at the start -- inferior to other tanks in overall mitigaition -- only to make it abnormally strong by the last tier.

[Breadgehog]

True. I guess I was assuming overmuch, since it seems remarkably poor design to specifically make a tank weaker at the start -- inferior to other tanks in overall mitigaition -- only to make it abnormally strong by the last tier.

I genuinely hadn't noticed block strength stagnated at Ronkan, that's on me. Historically it's been vaguely like BRD used to be with crit, okay to start but better as things go on. I don't necessarily think this is good design, just that it's in keeping with past decisions and seemed to be their intention. We'll see what the next tier brings, if there truly are no changes to block strength then Sheltron should probably just be a 15-20% reduction for its duration, without negating existing block.

[Shurrikhan]

[1] I genuinely hadn't noticed block strength stagnated at Ronkan, that's on me. Historically it's been vaguely like BRD used to be with crit, okay to start but better as things go on. I don't necessarily think this is good design, just that it's in keeping with past decisions and seemed to be their intention. We'll see what the next tier brings, if there truly are no changes to block strength then [2] Sheltron should probably just be a 15-20% reduction for its duration, without negating existing block.

[1] No worries. It was basically dumb luck that I happened to be looking over future alt gears and noticed that the moment my WHM hit 80.

[2] Personally, I like that if passive RNG blocking is to be PLD's answer to its reduced mitigation throughput over time (from its lacking an eHP CD relative to other tanks) then Shelltron effectively just makes reliable that RNG function. I just think it should then be significantly more frequent than most on-demand CDs (IR/NF and HoS at 25s regardless of uptime), rather than just barely so (Shelltron per 22.4 second of uptime). Heck, I'd almost rather the gauge be removed and Shelltron made (1) a 40-second, two-charge CD that is (2) later upgraded such that its cooldown is reduced with each auto-attack (until it averages out to 20 seconds or so in perfect uptime, or maybe 25s when including a whole away-from-boss Req phase, but still gets some benefit from downtime).