Why don't people like to pick/use Tenacity over Determination?

[TwitchingFool0]

I'm someone that's fairly new when it comes to tanking and I don't think I've had a full explanation as to why its not used much. I noticed some people complaining about the new Eden gear having Tenacity over Determination.

Anyone care to explain both their differences and why one is used over the other one to me?

[Quri]

Differences is like 2% if that, when it comes to damage. Full tenacity is doesn't cover a healer God, so it was deemed useless. But like I said before, 2-3% damage difference, when you compare the optimal build.

[Kalise]

Determination offers more damage than Tenacity.

That's about it for why Tenacity is not favoured.

Tenacity will provide damage reduction which Determination does not, but it is often not necessary to use since it will rarely save a Healer having to spend an extra GCD on a heal to top you off.

In addition, even if it DID save the Healer having to spend a GCD on a heal, it only means that they'd spend the GCD on a damage spell instead. Which would be worth less damage than if you simply had a better stat instead of Tenacity boosting your own damage instead.

Even with all this, there's still only one Tank that actually wants Determination, which is Warrior. Other Tanks would prefer having Crit and Direct Hit for higher damage, while Warrior gets less damage from Direct Hit due to their job mechanics providing guaranteed Direct Critical Hits and so gets more damage from Determination than Direct Hit.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Lengthy answer ahead. If the first two posts didn't feel like enough, this one will.
====================================================
Short Answer: It is an "OK" stat, but it is not the prefered option since other provide larger benefits of damage.

Long Answer:
==========
All jobs in this game have a preferred stat order, in the case of tanks it is:
PLD / DRK / GNB: Skillspeed to desired GCD > Crit > Direct Hit > Determination > Tenacity
WAR only: Skillspeed to desired GCD > Crit > Determination > Tenacity > Direct Hit (majority of its' damage contribution forces DH)

The reason for the stat order is simply the gain in damage you get, with having a perfect aligning rotation being the highest, Crit being 2nd highest, etc. This does not mean Tenacity is a bad stat for damage, just not the best one (and we have 5 stats to pick). It is best explained if we look at how much of a stat we need to pour in to get the result.

Statistic intervals creditted to Nemekh & the TheoryJerks, bless their honest work.


Based on those tables, we see we need 254 DET to gain +1% damage while we need 330 TEN to gain that 1% damage + reduction. So if the desire is mainly to increase damage, it makes sense why TEN is hardly favoured over other stats. But now to what makes Tenacity its own thing - its' built-in passive mitigation.

First of, as different damage buffs and stats work multiplicative (i.e. (20% + 20% = 44%, not 40%), so does mitigation. But the catch with mitigation unlike damage is that instead of getting greater results by stacking multiple damage multipliers, mitigation is victim to diminishing returns. The more %-based mitigation you use, the less effect the next one has when used. To give you a basic example with Warrior's cooldowns:

Rampart / Raw Int alone: 100% - 20% = 80%; you take 20% from the 100% original.
Rampart + Raw Int paired: 100% - 20% - 20% = 64%; the first 20% is as above, but the second mitigation takes from the remaining 80% instead (thus 16%)
So using Raw Int with Rampart diminished the total mitigation by 4%. This is still commonly used on tankbusters though, so don't think too hard about it.

The issue with TEN largely comes from us tanks having a large pool of mitigation options at our disposal to deal with basically every mechanic in the game. That on top of diminishing returns should make things clear.


However, to give you a second / third opinion by some of the fellas from theory discords such as Theoryjerks and TheBalance:

Mox Xinmagar 04/08/2019

Does Tenacity suck??

Tenacity is an efficient stat for what it is, both increasing damage and mitigation at a nominal rate. Tenacity is currently regarded as a progression stat, in a similar vein to Vitality melds of old - helpful on occasion and can save your life, but not enough to warrant continuous, future use. The gain of Tenacity is not in reducing healer load. The gain is in the “insurance policy.” Tenacity could be useful. It could save your life. But you won’t see tangible benefit from Tenacity until that moment where you almost die.

-Theoryjerks Discord / Emiin

What does Tenacity do for us??

Tenacity allows the whole party to make some mistakes.
Missed a Feint or Addle? Shields? Cooldown dropped a second too early?
Tenacity's got it.

Words of closure - having Tenacity on gear is not "bad", just not preferred. However, it is likely going to happen that your best-in-slot piece might end up having Crit + Tenacity on it. Due to Crit generally being the most sought-after stat, that extra Tenacity will generally be ok to have on your gear. Ok on gear, avoid to meld.

Hope this helps.

[Kabooa]

First of, as different damage buffs and stats work multiplicative (i.e. (20% + 20% = 44%, not 40%), so does mitigation. But the catch with mitigation unlike damage is that instead of getting greater results by stacking multiple damage multipliers, mitigation is victim to diminishing returns..

You get the same amount of benefit. There is no diminishing return.

20% Mitigation = 125% EHP.
36% Mitigation = 156.25% EHP (A 25% gain from the previous)
51.2% Mitigation = 195.3% EHP (a 25% gain from the previous)

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

You get the same amount of benefit. There is no diminishing return.

20% Mitigation = 125% EHP.
36% Mitigation = 156.25% EHP (A 25% gain from the previous)
51.2% Mitigation = 195.3% EHP (a 25% gain from the previous)

While your theory is correct and relative to each previous step it is a steady increase of +25% eHP (and relative to the original it grows exponentially), the reason we call it "diminishing returns" has nothing to do with eHP; the core of the explanation was "you can't reach -100% damage taken stacking %-based cooldowns because of the calculation being multiplicative, not additive", i.e. 20% + 20% =/= 40% but 36%.

Apart from that, you mistyped the 3rd mitigation. That should be 48.8% mitigation (51.2% remaining) to give 195.31% effective HP; 51.2% mitigation would be 200%+ eHP.

[Kabooa]

While your theory is correct and relative to each previous step it is a steady increase of +25% eHP (and relative to the original it grows exponentially), the reason we call it "diminishing returns" has nothing to do with eHP; the core of the explanation was "you can't reach -100% damage taken stacking %-based cooldowns because of the calculation being multiplicative, not additive", i.e. 20% + 20% =/= 40% but 36%.

Apart from that, you mistyped the 3rd mitigation. That should be 48.8% mitigation (51.2% remaining) to give 195.31% effective HP; 51.2% mitigation would be 200%+ eHP.

Yeah, I mixed one up.

But that's also not what diminishing returns means. It means your effective gain is less. The effective gain is the same.

If it wasn't a geometric ratio, then you'd have increasing returns.

Right now it's neutral. Each gain is the proportional same as the prior - not diminishing.

For example

Stacking Direct Hit is diminishing return, even if no soft cap is applied.

1% DH is .25% average damage increase. At 10% DH you have a 2.5% increase of damage.

Our current baseline is [0], but we'll use [5] instead because it plays nice. 0 to anything is an infinite increase.

Every additional % of DH from the previous is 'less effective'.

5% -> 10%: "100% more chance"
10% -> 15%: "50% more chance"
15% -> 20%: "33% more chance"

Linear scaling improvement such as DH, Offensive Tenacity, and Determination have diminishing returns. That's before a softcap is applied.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

You get the same amount of benefit. There is no diminishing return.

20% Mitigation = 125% EHP.
36% Mitigation = 156.25% EHP (A 25% gain from the previous)
51.2% Mitigation = 195.3% EHP (a 25% gain from the previous)

The point is that stacking mitigation will mitigate less damage than if you were to use them separately, whereas the opposite is true for damage buffs. Effective HP is a separate matter; it is not equivalent to mitigation.

Linear scaling improvement such as DH, Offensive Tenacity, and Determination have diminishing returns.

This statement contradicts itself. Linear scaling is, by definition, not subject to diminishing returns.

The damage you would gain from increasing your direct hit rate from 5% to 10% is the same as the damage you would gain from increasing your direct hit rate from 10% to 15%. The relative increase in direct hit rate is entirely irrelevant with regards to actual output (damage).

[Risvertasashi]

I'm someone that's fairly new when it comes to tanking and I don't think I've had a full explanation as to why its not used much. I noticed some people complaining about the new Eden gear having Tenacity over Determination.

Anyone care to explain both their differences and why one is used over the other one to me?

Tenacity will never make a perceptible difference in the amount of healing you need. It will never be the breakpoint between a healer choosing to spend resources to heal you, vs doing damage or something else.

On the flipside, every small bit of damage counts. That extra 1%, or even 0.1%, might be the difference between wiping at 0.1% hp as the boss enrages and clearing.

[DRKoftheAzure]

@Reinhardt_Azureheim there is no info on the Tank Mastery Trait that tanks have since that is automatic 20% damage reduction, so the math is probably a bit skewed there at least for mitigation...