Minimum Deflection Chance vs. Shield Protection Value

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

But I did exactly the maths you did in your example, merely with the Brawler tanking instead of the Warrior. The long and short of it is that 30+18.9=48.9% and 50+8.1=58.1% and that 48.9% means the tank is taking 22% more damage than the tank with 58.1%.
The end result is that the Brawler is taking less damage because of the way the avoidance lend system works: You're always better off with the person with the highest base avoidance tanking (because the lend ability reduces the effectiveness of lent avoidances by 46% while the base avoidance of the tanking person is unchanged).
If we carry that line of reasoning on:
Assume the plate tank has capped mit; for the Brawler to have equal survivability then they would need to have 69.5% mitigation.
69.5% damage reduction due to mitigation is at around 9800 mit vs a lvl 90 mob. Or 10600 mit vs a lvl 98. Again, I don't think those are unreasonable targets; they should be fairly easy to attain in a MT group.

BChizzle wrote:

Well, I can't argue with you on one point, which is that plate tanks now have just about as much avoidance as brawlers do, which makes this little tangent somewhat pointless. The whole reason for this thread initially was that the fact that brawlers in defensive have only a minuscule avoidance advantage over plate tanks with a fabled shield. Brawlers ought to have a higher innate minimum deflection chance, because shields have kept improving over time while our minimum deflection chance didn't get any higher at all in SF.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Being immune to strikethrough gives us a pretty big advantage over plate tanks. Now I know they lowered the amount mobs striketrhough this expansion but it still seems around a 10% avoidance advantage over plates which is very nice. I am not sure what more you want, like more then a 10% advantage? I will agree with you though it is kind of suck tanks get better shields and we will be stuck with the same base block, but maybe instead of putting block % on a million items devs can throw us like an offhand with some min block chance on it to offset any new shields.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Um.
You seem to be picking and choosing numbers to conform to your viewpoint.
Yes, a good shield with 1866 protection also has 23.3% block chance, increasing it's effectiveness to 26.3% avoidance. But you're now comparing a shield (a not easy to get shield) plus the extra stat from a plate tank only peice of gear (The shield) to the base avoidance of a brawler. Why not factor in Brawler only stat opportunities? By my reckoning a brawler should be able to find >28% more Block chance on gear than a Warrior simply because brawler gear has +block chance instead of the +mit of plate tanks, and more AAs that grant + block than Warriors get.
So the real comparison to be drawn is 27% + 28% block chance vs 1866 protection + 23.3% block chance.
34.7% vs 26.3%.
Oh, yes, and the strikethrough immunity makes a massive difference. My 40% block avoidance (Guard and according to my persona window) converted to a less than 20% actual chance to block when I was fighting Roehn Theer last night. By comparison the monk was able to lend me about 100% of his persona block avoidance (65%-70%).
To finish up:
A Brawler needs 160% Block Chance to hit 70% Uncontested Block.
A Plate Tank needs 226% Block Chance to hit 70% Uncontested Block.
Again, quite a large difference. I really can't see the issue about which you are complaining; every time I look at it I see only a fair advantage for Brawlers. Maybe you're comparing Brawlers to Paladins? (Who can get hold of tons of +Block Chance in their AAs).

I'm comparing the avoidance not factoring in gear (with the exception of a shield, which should be included simply because you're guaranteed to have that piece equipped when tanking, just like the brawler is guaranteed to be in defensive stance).
The block chance on brawler gear is compensated for by the mitigation increase on plate gear. If a brawler item has +6 block chance, the plate equivalent has +6 mit increase. While its true that brawlers get a slightly higher benefit from block chance than plates do, it is also true that plate tanks get a slightly higher benefit from mitigation increase than brawlers get (since you're modifying the higher mitigation numbers from plate gear instead of from leather).
I used a high end shield because this problem only exists at the high end level--for heroic grouping brawlers have a perfectly fine avoidance advantage.
The point is that shield's protection values are continually getting better, while brawler's minimum deflection chance is essentially staying constant. Ideally some sort of fix that happens only at the high end would be ideal. Kander is pretty awesome and full of brawler love so maybe we can convince him to make a defensively oriented brawler weapon drop off of Theer that has +minimum deflection chance on it.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

And I'm saying that you cannot consider items or abilities in a vacuum.
A warrior is not guaranteed to be wearing a shield when tanking. A brawler is not guaranteed to be using def stance. A brawler is not guaranteed to have a full set of defensive plate equipped while tanking, but nor is the warrior.
A few points: You're considering high end only. +mit becomes completely useless very early on in the raid progression; mitigation can be capped quite easily. It also enjoys diminished returns as it closes in on the cap. It also does not effect a large portion of a characters mitigation (Character advancement choices and mitigation buffs of all forms are unaffected by +mit). Check out my post here on mitigation mechanics for the ins and outs of how mit works. Long and short of it is that having higher base (gear) mit does not increase your benefit from +mit gear.
Uncontested Block is a far simpler mechanism. No diminishing returns here (Mitigation is on a diminishing returns curve) and so the benefit you gain from every successive point of Block Chance increases exponentially:


So the fact that Brawlers have access to far more Block Chance gear than plate tanks is extremely important when comparing the two. It is NOT a like for like relationship between Block Chance and +mit. (Just to reiterate, survivability gains from mitigation are linear, going from 1000 to 2000 mit gives the same survivability gain as going from 10000 to 11000 mit). Everything to do with avoidance is weighted in favour of Brawlers. It's easier for a brawler to get lots of block chance gear, so they can be higher up that nice curve than plate tanks while at the same time getting the same benefit from any +mit they can find as a plate tank would get. Not only that but their base (un-block-modified) block is far higher than a tank can currently attain (yes, there is an upward trend with shield protection values but shields suffer from gear degradation as levels increase). Oh. And their avoidance is immune to strikethrough.
If a plate tank has 40% Uncontested Block (Persona window) and 75% mitigation (Very easy to get) here's a graph of what a brawler needs to have the same survivability as the plate tank (assuming they fairly trade avoidance buffs):

So if the brawler has 40% Block (the same as the plate tank) then they want 14200 ish mit (75% vs a lvl 98) (The same as the plate tank)
If the brawler has 60% block then they want 9750 ish mit to be as survivable as the mit capped plate tank. This takes no account of strikethrough immunity, which would further reduce the mit target that the brawler has to hit.
To be honest... I agreed with you, until I started trying to prove your point with maths at which point I came up against the points I've tried to present here. I'm now thinking about trying our guild monk MTing Roehn Theer next time we kill him, to see if there's truth in the maths. In theory he should be far more survivable than I.

Hey, pretty graphs. It's worth noting that since its spikes that kill, not overall damage done, your definition of "survivability" is a bit off. I've been trying to compare the damage that I've been taking compared to our plate tanks on fights like the three sages, and I've actually been taking less damage pretty consistently...but its a really hard thing to check accurately, since things like whether or not you stand in range of the mob when its immune to damage could throw it off pretty easily.
Kander actually just gave us an offhand on the vender with a ton of block chance but really low damage rating, which is essentially the brawler equivalent of equipping a shield. Given that we can wear one of those and get that same big shield block boost, you're right that its not really fair to include that in the calculations, which means we have a solid 7% advantage over plate tanks, plus strikethrough. I think that's pretty reasonable in the long run. I guess I'll withdraw my objection

Besides the 23.3% block chance though it also has the rancorous ire proc, so unless we're primary tanking you're probably not going to equip it.

Aule@Guk wrote:

Yeah, I really do not like the Rancorous Ire proc. It is useless if you have agro and it is dangerous if your trying to stay at #2 on the hate list (such as being an OT). The only time it is even marginally useful is if you are trying to get back to the top hate position (from a death or a memwipe, for example).

Defensively this is still a great weapon especially when used in conjunction with the living stone Cestus. However, it still provides less avoidance and around similar damage output with the Supple Dogwood Staff (Sublime Cestus + Living Stone Cestus grant a total of ~11.8% block, Supple Dogwood Staff is 15% dodge). Perhaps the Rancorous Ire proc could be replaced with a small amount of minimum block. It would only take about 1.5% minimum block to make this weapon combination on par with the Supple Dogwood Staff (if you had 100% block chance that is).

The Sublime Cestus is a very useful but extremely situational item. I don't see why anyone would use this unless you were tanking--generally speaking the weapons with high block chance have really crummy damage ratings, and the cestus is no exception. My plan is to use Uthgar's Sword and the sublime handwraps most of the time, and I have a macro to swap to the sublime/defender's cestus when I'm tanking. Given that you can swap weapons in and out during combat, I just won't use it unless I'm actively tanking. I'd rather rancorous ire than Undeniable Malice though--I have more undeniable malice III procs when I'm in my defensive gear than I know what to do with.
Frankly, given that the damage rating is so low, I think that a positional proc is probably a good thing. There's a serious dps tradeoff involved in wearing this and the defender's cestus, so the more hate the better.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Not that this is the right place to discuss this, but you would get a massive amount more hate and positions by just equipping a better weapon even on memwiping mobs, remember it just jumps you 1 position in hate which is really nothing.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Rancorous Ire is completely useless except a) when trying to regain hate after a blur; or b) when you have OTs that constantly rip aggro off of the MT. In either case, a 1 hate position proc is going to be marginally useful at best, i.e. when you get lucky and it procs at the right time.
If you're already on top of the hate list, Rancorous Ire does nothing, and thus it would be pointless to wear while tanking. You'd be better off with the higher DPS weapon because you'd get far more hate out of increased DPS than you would out of Ire procs.
Undeniable Malice, on the other hand, continues to be useful to those currently at the top of the hate list.

Eldrie@Antonia Bayle wrote:

That's undeniable. /duck

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

What spikes?
You have more Block chance
You have equal MIT
You are immune to Strikethrough
You have more Hit Points.
Brawlers at the moment totally and utterly own plate fighters in the Turtle up department, no other fighter can come close to achieving such survivability when totally Def specced.

Well...
First off, I think its pretty clear that weapons like the Sublime and Defender's Cestii are meant to be basically the equivalent for brawlers of equipping a shield. It's a big tradeoff: you lose a lot of dps due to the terrible damage rating and gain a lot of survivability. It wouldn't be right to have a high-damage weapon that also gave us a big survivability boost. People are always complaining about Crusader's being able to do just that via Knight's Stance for a reason, after all.
If I'm using the Cestus, I'm probably planning on tanking. And if I'm planning on tanking, I'll be in my tank gear. Just take a look at the kind of things we're likely to be wearing when we're tanking:

• Tenacious Leggings of the Plague (Undeniable Malice III)
• Hatespike Earring (Undeniable Malice III)
• Gwarthea's Gem of Venom (Undeniable Malice III)
• Luminous Earring of Offense (Undeniable Malice III)
• Blighted Mithril Choker (Undeniable Malice III)
• Belted Waistwrap of the Strong (Undeniable Malice III)
• Malleable Bedrock Slab (Undeniable Malice III)
• Tenacious Cesti of Primal Fear (Undeniable Malice III)

Remember that a single hit can't trigger Undeniable Malice III more than once, so for each additional piece with this proc on it you're getting drastically marginalized returns. Is it a good proc in general? Yeah, it is. Does it need to be on everything? No. I think that we'll get better aggro control from wearing two pieces of undeniable malice III and rancorous ire than we would from three pieces of undeniable malice III.

I think its okay that this item is situational. That's the current trend in monk itemization, and frankly I like it. Having an entirely separate dps set and tank set makes me more capable of fulfilling multiple roles and more useful to my raidforce than having a single set (even if 5% drop rates on gear make me a sad monk). There's already a dps weapon on the merchant and by the time you've earned 200 spare seals to buy both that and the cesti most people will already have one of the three fistwraps that drop off of easymode mobs.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I read a post on Flames that started with the premise that UM would only proc once per attack. By the end of the thread there were examples showing multiple UM procs (of the same rank) firing off the same parse. There were other examples as well with some large sample sizes showing the number of procs doubling as well.

Wow... Rancorous Ire was an amazing proc. Now it just got changed to the really useless Scornful Presence 2. Thanks!

You're welcome!
You guys made such lovely arguments for why it is awful (or rather, ripping like mad off of our wonderful MT made a very convincing argument for why I was wrong and the proc was awful). !

Since the proc Rancorous Ire is too horrible to even be used on a hotswappable weapon depending on the situation, Could we get it removed from this earring? Thanks!

We should post that request on the items forum instead of here. I doubt Kander reads this forum. We should also ask for more offhands that are comparable to the awesome shields plate tanks get >.>