Devs, it would be nice with an acknowledgement of the issue, even if that takes the form of, "We're looking into it," or "The plate tank mitigation nerf was intended."
Yeah putting brawler leather armour so close to plate makes no sense. Give my guardian deflection skill please and I will be ok with this!
Why are you asking for Plate Mitigation to gain a boost when the problem isnt Mitigation, its the Monks ability to chain Avoidance Temps / Stone Skins & Death Prevents in an almost 100% Rotation. With the amount of Strike Through currently sitting on mobs this expac, your uncontested Avoidance isnt doing sh** anyways. Leveling the playing field between Brawlers and Plate Tanks was the idea with the increase on Leather Armor, however without the adjustment to Monk avoidance buffs, all you did was make an already powerful tank even more powerful. I am not including Bruiser's in this as this expac I can finaly say that I feel we are awesome and on an even playing field with plate. I am not asking for 'anything' to get nerfed, just pointing out the issue with this thread. Your crying for an increase to plate mitigation when that isn't the problem. My guild isnt clearing the expac but we are doing decent with progression and I havnt ran into anything yet that a plate tank cant tank because of there mit or avoidance, and this is with running 2 healers.
I haven't met anything I can't tank either on my SK, in fact I have MT'ed 2 first kills in raids for my guild so far. However... if I don't coordinate a DP rotation with my healers, along with my own temps, I will go down. Meanwhile our monk just lulz and keeps on going without any need at all for any special considerations. Balance has gone completely out the window.
I'm the MT of Relentless and with the exception of two mobs in Temple, we've killed everything that any guild has killed, so clearly guardians are able to tank the content--that isn't the issue. That is the issue: Balance. Monks bring better survivability, better AE hate generation, and way more DPS to the table than guardians (in part due to being able to gear offensively vs content that requires most plate tanks to turtle up). The obvious solution would be a nerf of Tsunami (double the recast, say), which would suddenly necessitate that monks actually take a significant amount of hits without damage reduction and/or mitigation temps being able to fill the gap. Which I have suggested time and again, yet with nothing to show for my efforts. So I'm now trying to improve tank balance in smaller ways, such as the armor mitigation discrepancy and the shield vs deflection inequality (which still hasn't been dealt with adequately and probably won't until mythical shields start appearing).
Plate Armor's Mitigation itself in all cases needs a significant buff by at least 33%. However instead of "+ Parry" we should get a stat that further reduces damage from "magical" attacks only though.
given the current heroic and raid weapons that drop for Brawlers holding 70% uncontested Block on a brawler is hard. we would have to give up a lot of Mit that we could otherwise get. without the 2 endgame weapons from ToV or a lot of Block gear we are not hitting 70% block. with that said, maxing out block will not give that much to survivability, since the amount of Strikethrow on named. If monks are OP (I do not think so) then its a separate descution that has nothing to do with "Items and Equipment" nor does it have anything to do with plate Mit. from the raid named that I have killed i have seen a lot of things that do not favor Monks MTing over Guards. actualy Bruisers probably have a hand up since that have the All Damage types Stoneskinns, but even then, since the mobs hit so fast Stoneskinns are of limited use. Physical Mit is nice and most all of the mobs have a Phsical Autoattack, but most of the hard hits are not Phsical it is looking like. Just for a note, i am not against plate getting some increase in base Mit, but 33%.... i do not think that is needed, 10-15% would probably prove to be good.
http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/1301377120549 That's my monk guildmate. Notice that he isn't wearing any Block Chance armor but only Mitigation% and WDB pieces. Observe that his jewelry and charms are mostly DPS-focused. Now take note of the 70% Uncontested Block he is sitting at self-buffed. Compare that to my character: http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/459562360904 Lots of Block Chance gear. Best shield that has dropped in the expansion thus far. 56.7% Uncontested Block. I reiterate: Unbalanced.
This expansion, I have thus far seen possibly one raid boss with more than 40% Strikethrough (easy to check for yourself: get a scout to use their new ability on a raid boss and you'll get a complete rundown on all the pertinent stats, including ST.) That aside, you're able to debuff strikethrough significantly. There's a ring that procs 10% ST reduction (maintainable), for instance.
Very inteesting. 2 things tho. 1st. he is using the 2 weapons from the endgame of ToV. that most monks will not see and they do not drop anything like it in AoM atm. 2nd. His EQ2U profile does not say he has 70% uncontested Block. he has 107% Block chanse witch is not enuff statick to give 70% Uncontested, he will probably be around 60-65%. so for all intensive persises, he weapons do not drop for players that where not in the top 10-20 guilds and his block is not that much more then yours is, you are reading the profile wrang.
Looking at his profile, I have to wonder... did you click on the wrong person or something? Cause his stats are way higher than that.
hhmmm, interesting, his Block went up by about 30 and his Mit went down byy a lot.... but Block Chance on EQ2u does not give the Uncontested Block %.
You are also missing the huge disparity in the buffs from the defensive/myth. Monk : 5% physical damage reduction 2.4% base avoidance 16% Uncontested block 49.5 Parry, Defense, and Deflection 29% increased mitigation 15% increased block chance (on top of the +uncontested above) 50% strikethrough (mindboggling...) vs. say an SK 5% physical damage reduction (same on both) 5% base avoidance (ok slight increase, but this does not bring a plate tank to leather avoidance levels) 0% increased uncontested avoidance 49.6 Defense (where is the parry and block?) 15% increased mitigation (this is the real kicker) 0% increased block 0% Strikethrough The plate buffs are missing absolutely massive amounts of avoidance in comparison. Along with the free 14% mitigation boost on monks, puts them ahead in all areas.
plz do not try to compare a Defensive tank to an Offensive tank. also this is the "Items and Equipment" area of the forams not tank balance.
It doesn't matter, do some research. Change SK to "Guardian" and look at the buffs, they are exactly the same and Guardian has exactly the same differences (well granted guardian does get the missing 49.5 parry, but still no block?) And that is in itself another issue altogether. Why is the defensive buff of the most defensive tank have exactly the same stats as the most offensive tank? And it is relevant to the forum. Because of the buff disparity between the 2 classes gear is worth FAR more on a point for point basis to a monk than it is to a plate tank. The buffs have to be looked at when comparing gear. If the monk gets so much naturally, they have to get far less from gear to be balanced. This is the crux of the point of this post. Leather tank gear is far too close in stats to plate tank gear.
For heroic content almost every tank is either a pally or a monk. Warriors are a rare breed these days, and imo warriors, guards specifically should have the biggest mit/dmg reduction since they are the "pure" tank class, crusaders are packed with healing and massive AE control and brawlers have a few heals aswell as a set of amazing temps. Don't get me wrong guards got some sweet temps too, but not in comparison. Guards need more dmg reduction/mit to be able to shine like monks and pallys.
Again, Plate tanks shouldnt be having any difficulties this expac.. period. Monks and Zerkers still reign supreme due to there Temp Buffs. But the increase to mitigation values only increases the power of the classes that were already ahead of the curve. The " ONLY " tank I can think of that gained a bit of balance due to this change was the Bruiser. Every tank has the strong points and there weak points but calling for an increase to Plate Mitigation to " LvL " the playing field is not .." I REPEAT !! NOT !! " the way to do it.
My primary concern is high-end raiding. Besides, the lower your gear level, the more the monk's Uncontested Block will reign supreme: keep in mind that Protection on a shield matters one hell of a lot more than Block Chance (the two are multiplicative, not additive, which is at the root of the problem). That's the reason why the monk is able to reach 70% Uncontested Block with way less Block Chance than my character--his innate Protection is better than what I have on my tier 2 raid shield, so he gets substantially more Uncontested Block per point of Block Chance than I do. Speaking of which, if I were still able to use my mythical shield that I was using the last two expansions, like the monk is using his old off-hander, there wouldn't be any Uncontested Block discrepancy, but the devs saw to it that that wasn't a viable option. Firstly, I of course asked my guildmate what his Uncontested Block was at; he said it was at 70%. Secondly, you apparently don't know how to read a character profile. Look for the stat "Block" (not "Block Chance") in the left-hand pane, then divide it by 10. That's your Uncontested Block.
Actually, it does the opposite. Last expansion, I was able to swap mitigation gear for some DPS gear, to match what the monk was doing with Block Chance gear. This expansion, conversely, I'm not at the mitigation cap, so I can't exchange Mitigation% for DPS gear. On top of that, the mitigation advantage that plate tanks in general and warriors in particular still hold is 1) all but disappearing due to gear discrepancies and 2) worth much less on a point-by-point basis that last expansion due to the extension of the mitigation curve without an equivalent boost of mitigation on our gear and (temp) buffs. Meanwhile, Uncontested Block is arguably even more important than last expansion since effective Strikethrough values on raid bosses are lower, and high-end plate tanks have all been nerfed even more significantly in that regard, too.
