Question Regarding Defense: Everyone seems focused on the DPS factor of each line, I'd like to turn it towards examining the defensive aspects for a bit. Regarding the AGI Line Dragoon's Advance: is it really 2.9% Defense per point maxing at 23.2%? meaning @ lvl 70 unbuffed you go from 350 to 431.2 Defense The FAQ says untested, yet says this 23.2% bonus affects avoidance between 4.5 an 6% can anyone Confirm this? I'd also like to entertain opinions on how this skill stacks up vs the other AA defensive choices Especially 8 points in the WIS +40 Mitigation per point INT Parry 2.9% per point Where do the caps land in terms of each? I know Mitigation Caps at 80% (somewhere over 5k Mit @ lvl 70 I believe), while avoidance is pretty much uncapable for warriors. Is there a "Defense" skill cap? Due to this, I'm guessing the Mitigation from the WIS would become trivial for a raid tank with good equip and buffs, while the INT and AGI bonus' would remain useful. All thoughts on this appreciated.
The FAQ says 4.5-6% total evasion boost, not boost to Defense. The amount of Defense skill you receive is dependent on your level, however it equates to nearly the same total % of evasion regardless of your level, 4.5-6% (at 8 points.) The boost also varies with your defense skill itself, as it is not a linear relationship. I'd also like to entertain opinions on how this skill stacks up vs the other AA defensive choices Especially 8 points in the WIS +40 Mitigation per point INT Parry 2.9% per point The mitigation boost comes up to being ~4.5% total mitigation at 8 points, regardless of level. At level 70 I believe it comes to a total of 320 mitigation. Where do the caps land in terms of each? Skills cap at level * 6, so defense and parry cap at 420. Mitigation and resists cap at your opponent's level * 80. For a level 70 you will reach 80% mitigation at 5600 mitigation to a damage type. I know Mitigation Caps at 80% (somewhere over 5k Mit @ lvl 70 I believe), while avoidance is pretty much uncapable for warriors. Is there a "Defense" skill cap? [/QUOTE] I would not call avoidance "uncapable." I am often well over 60% avoidance and it is a strong part of my tanking. The defense skill cap is level*6, or 420 for a level 70. Due to this, I'm guessing the Mitigation from the WIS would become trivial for a raid tank with good equip and buffs, while the INT and AGI bonus' would remain useful. If anything the opposite is true. I reach ~400 defense and parry self-buffed in D stance. A raid tank is easily going to max defense and parry, however mitigation is always helpful, as it is more difficult to keep consistently capped. [/QUOTE]
I would not call avoidance "uncapable." I am often well over 60% avoidance and it is a strong part of my tanking. The defense skill cap is level*6, or 420 for a level 70. Well the Avoidance cap is 80% which you're not approaching...which is what I meant by "Uncappable" but as you're pointing out there are other component caps...such as defense or parry. What if any, are the other factors for avoidance for warriors? Due to this, I'm guessing the Mitigation from the WIS would become trivial for a raid tank with good equip and buffs, while the INT and AGI bonus' would remain useful. If anything the opposite is true. I reach ~400 defense and parry self-buffed in D stance. A raid tank is easily going to max defense and parry, however mitigation is always helpful, as it is more difficult to keep consistently capped. Are Defense and Parry really close to being capped self buffed with Dstance? If so the Parry and Defense AA's frim INT and AGI seem nigh unto useless. However when fighting lvl 74-75 epics the cap is 444-450 if its based on the opponent's level as i've been lead to believe. Can anyone Confirm?. Summary: Ranking these skills, assuming a cap isnt' exceeded it appears they would be ranked from most to least effective: 1. WIS Line Mitigation 2. AGI Line Defense (due to omnidirectional application) 3. INT Line Parry 4 STR Line - no negative effects, but no bonus' to defensive skills 5 STA line - Some Avoidance traded for the highest overall DPS bonus' [/QUOTE] [/QUOTE]Message Edited by Griffonage on 07-24-2006 11:08 AM Message Edited by Griffonage on 07-24-2006 11:09 AM
Even though mitigation caps at 80%, more is useful, and the devs have said this. A couple obvious reasons would be if you're fighting a mob higher than your level, or if the mob(s) debuff you. [/QUOTE][/QUOTE] Message Edited by FightGame on 07-24-2006 02:39 PM Message Edited by FightGame on 07-24-2006 02:41 PM
Griffonage wrote: ... Am I reading this right? If the Defense Skill Cap is 420, then this skill essentially is capped self buffed with this AA? I run with around 405 defense alone in my m1 D stance. If I took the achievement I'd break the cap. ... Not Bad as long as you're not capped from Equip and buffs....if you are this is useless no?. If capped against your opponent then all additional skills/stats/etc are only useful if you receive a debuff that reduces them, thus making your extra a debuff buffer. ... Well the Avoidance cap is 80% which you're not approaching...which is what I meant by "Uncappable" but as you're pointing out there are other component caps...such as defense or parry. What if any, are the other factors for avoidance for warriors? Avoidance has no hard cap to my knowledge as it functions as a combination of 3 soft-capped factors. I believe the order of defensive checks is Parry/Riposte, Block, Evade. ... Are Defense and Parry really close to being capped self buffed with Dstance? If so the Parry and Defense AA's frim INT and AGI seem nigh unto useless. However when fighting lvl 74-75 epics the cap is 444-450 if its based on the opponent's level as i've been lead to believe. Can anyone Confirm?. Under M1 D stance I run with around 405 Defense and 395 parry. Group me with anyone who buffs parry or defense and I'm at cap. Summary: Ranking these skills, assuming a cap isnt' exceeded it appears they would be ranked from most to least effective: 1. WIS Line Mitigation Mitigation is always the safe fallback. 2. AGI Line Defense (due to omnidirectional application) 3. INT Line Parry 4 STR Line - no negative effects, but no bonus' to defensive skills 5 STA line - Some Avoidance traded for the highest overall DPS bonus' In my opinion STA's defensive option is the second best, not the worst. If you can get over giving up the initial block. It gives you 4.5% riposte which does not factor into your skill caps, and also gives you 360 degree parry which doesn't factor into skillcaps. You give up about 4-5% frontal avoidance from block total, but gain 4-5% circular avoidance. For a group tank I feel this is an advantage, especially if you pull large encounters, or pull lots of encounters. For a raid tank it is a disadvantage though. Parry is the second hardest skill to cap, as few classes buff it. Defense is the easiest to cap. A bonus to hate is nice, but you should have classes enhancing your hate significantly in a raid situation already, but +hate is easily much more difficult to get than +def or +parry, so it is still a good option.
I MT for my guild, but for purely DPS i've wanted to try: Str: 448 Sta: 448 Wis: 444 Int: 41 That should net you 72% double attack, 22% crit, 10% DPS, 22% haste. Depending on what group buffs you normally end up with i might change it around. If you wanted to balance that with some more defense take a few points out (probably int line) and re-distribute them into the +mit or +avoid with buckler.
The reason is fairly straightforward, and that is that bucklers have a much lower block chance than a round or kite shield. Shields are designed fairly simply. If all shields are the same level and same quality tier (fabled, legendary, treasured) then the buckler will block x% of the time, a round shield 2x%, and a tower/kite shield will block 3x%. Meaning if a tower shield had 1500 block, a roundwould have 1000, and a buckler would have 500. These are rough figures, but fairly accurate, especially if you look at items such as crafted shields, or quest rewards. I don't know what the best fabled gear out there is, the best fabled tower shield I've seen has 1402 protection IIRC. 1402 protection to a level 70 is 20% block. In comparison the best bucklers I've seen are around 380-400, which comes to about ~5.5% total block chance for a buckler user. The Stamina line gives 4.5% additional block, bringing it to 10%, and then gives 4.5% riposte, which brings it to 14.5%. Even with the best bucklers out there you will still only come up to about 15-16% versus a tower/kite's 20%, meaning you are still losing ~4-5% frontal evasion. For a raid tank interested in absolutely minimizing damage taken, and who is capable of keeping an enemy in front of them, they may find that 4-5% additional evasion to be too valuable to pass up. But, like I said, that net ~4-5% frontal loss comes with a 4.5% circular gain in 360 parry, the lines really work towards a different yet equal net effect, STA does require a larger investment, both in gear restrictions and point sinks to realize its potential though.
Salutations Fellow Berserkers- First off- I am happy to say I just dinged 70 last night Yea me!!- now for the real reason I am writing this: I want to say thank you to Dimglow for writing an excellent post on the different choices for AA's ( and thanks to all the followup posts everyone else has written) - I am a casual player who never raids- just dont have the time for it- so I mainly just pick up groups nightly when I play, that being said I have been for the longest time down the Wisdom line 4 4 4 4 8 and then just a smattering of other stuff. I have been poring over this subject lately and have even gone so far as to steal your line Dimglow 4 8 8 8 STA 4 4 8 AGI 4 1 INT ( I hope you dont mind )- And let me say that Sta ability to double attack every 76% of the time- HOLY COW- what a difference that makes! I picked up an Iron plate shielding buckler- having gone down this road I lost about 100 mit and 4 % avoidance- not a horrible price to pay for the extra damage- now I will work on getting the extra defense from agility and see how I fair. Thanks again for all your time in this post!
Glad to have been of help. I appreciate the positive feedback. There have been a number of people who have even made toons on my server to thank me or ask questions, and it is still surprising the number of thank yous I get. I don't mind you using the same build as me, it isn't like I trademarked it or anything, I hope you enjoy it as much as me. :smileyvery-happy:
I posted this on another thread allready, but thought tht it would fir better in this one: I was thinking going to 4 8 8 Sta & 4 4 5 8 8 Wis (or 4 4 8 4 8 Wis for dps), i don't raid tank, atleast yet, so my focus would be in groups and dps, or should i put more into sta or some other line and ignore Stance Mastery? Message Edited by Undercova on 08-12-2006 01:23 PM
Can anyone confirm if the final ability in Stamina line, called Perseverence (I think), is fixed and working as of today (8/14/06)??? I tried it before and it was not working at all. Still consumed same amount of power and no health gain.
Stance mastery's largest benefit is for players who want to fight in defensive stance against yellow or higher con enemies. Combat Skills are somewhat difficult to get, and poor accuracy (which is the result of low slashing/piercing/crushing) can drop our DPS by as much as 50% solely due to missing attacks. Templars and wardens buff these skills naturally. Dirges have a song which grants a significant buff as well, and Paladins who spec WIS get an amazing aura that boosts these. If you group wi th any of those it may not be worth considering giving up 8 points for what is really not a large boost to combat skills (even if it does mean a lot of accuracy.) The reason I don't think stance mastery is so effective for players fighting in offensive stance is that +defense is very easy to get, and you can quite easily negate your offensive stance penalty.
Well i use defensive stance allways when i take damage, solo, group or in raids where i might need to grab aggro, and offensive only when i'm just doing damage, and not taking it.
Can anyone confirm if the final ability in Stamina line, called Perseverence (I think), is fixed and working? I'd really like to try it out, but I know it WAS broke. I guess nobody has this, to say whether it's working or not...
Well, yesterday I respeced from my STA: 4 6 8 8 WIS: 4 4 7 8 to STR: 4 4 8 8 WIS: 4 4 8 8 This was mainly due to needing more frontal blockage specifically for raid tanking - I think when we get more t7 equip I will respec to buckler somewhere down the line but for the moment I think it is needed Todays raid I went from Azjer'orz Guard (Buckler) +20 Strength+22 Stamina +16 Wisdom +80 mana +80 health +568 vs heat +355 vs divine+5 defense Protection:398 - Level 68 to Draconic Deflector(Kite) +26 Strength +26 Stamina +18 Wisdom +70 mana +100 health +1095 vs heat +146 vs slashing +146 vs crushing +146 vs piercing Protection:1402 - Level 70 Going from Ajezor's Guard -> Draconic Deflector, I went 10.2 block to 20.7 - so this is exactly inline with Kemt's analysis - 4.9% invisible riposte there also, so I'm gaining a little over 5% block Going AG to DD is Fabled instead of Legendary, and is also lvl 70 Another thing to take into consideration was I was swaping in Etheral Buckler of Bzyle for MT'n to do the +mit on it sits at 353 protection, is lvl 60 legendary so I was loosing even more block (it was about 8% block total) and also being a lvl 60 item wasn't as effective - In retrospec, I could and probably should have used the Ajezor's Guard over the Bylze because loosing the block, defense (if not capped) and being a little higher in lvls 68 vs. 60 probably wasn't worth it just for the +mit on the Bylze. Ethereal Buckler of Bylze +5 Stamina+20 Wisdom +65 mana +45 health +189 vs disease +189 vs cold +189 vs heat +189 vs magic+189 vs mental +189 vs divine +189 vs poison+63 vs slashing +63 vs crushing+63 vs piercingProtection:353 Level:60 Kemt and I are are both raid tanks on Venekor PvP server with a cross guild raiding entity www.venekorcore.com - and doing t7 raid content we are "probably" not quite as equiped as we should be for this (we went straight to t7 raiding), hense why my change for the moment - ironically I think this spread is going to work fine between myself and kemt MT'ing as frequently I grab the bigger guy and kemt peels off adds (which benefits more from the 360 degree parry). On peliminary testing - my dps has been reduced a bit ~ 10 - 15% (estimated guess and not surprised) however aggro doesn't seem to have changed at all - probably due to spike crits/CA's and the hate in str path - I do feel the extra block quite a bit on the bigger mobs - but I'll have to see actually on raid mobs Another thing to consider is as a Berserker it is fairly easy to keep aggro due to dps already - MT guardians might gain even more to stamina line due to the increase in DPS I think between the DD and AG that I gained more than 5% due to it being Fabled, more mit, and it's a lvl 70 item - which brings up another discussion would it be worth it to switch from stam/buckler to tower/kite if you can't get better than around a 1k protection one with no mit on it such as the Doomguard Protector? (1051 protection) I would say no - that there would be absolutely no point - you would only be gainin 2% ish block, loosing dps etc I think IF you can come across a high protection shield 1300+ and IF you are a raid MT then going Tower/Kite, +mit in wis line is probably the better way by a small amount If you cannot get a 1300+ protection tower/kit shield, or are not a MT, or are so equiped that it doesn't matter (have high end raid gear), then stam line is an absolute no brainer I contimplated going all the way down the agility line for the last skill however I just can't justify the last one because it's to situational and doesn't block spell damage - I also contimplated going down the Int line for the +parry however the rest of the line is substandard due to the fact that I'm nearly always capped on haste in raids/groups - Kemt has about the "perfect" AA setup for using a sword prime and maximizing general group instances - and has also proved that he is capable of tanking raid mobs as well Message Edited by Zervun on 08-28-2006 09:31 AM
Just a follow up - Did my first raid since I have had this spec - it was over our heads equip wise but we tried it anyway I held noticeably more aggro than stam spec probably due to 8 points into hate and 8 points into crits - I lost aggro a couple times at most Healers noticed and I did also that tankability went up quite significantly dps was definately down though especially with being extremely defensive using our slow/mit buff I probably dropped a good 20% dps And on a side note - when going through multiple sets of equipment much harder to find a decent comparable tower/kite - while 3 great bucklers higher end are fairly easy to get (we have nearly 0 repair kits on our side on our pvp server)
I am a 61 zerk with 18 AAs. I abandoned the AGI line recently for WIS 4444 and started STA line with #18. I rarely raid and am never the highest level tank when we do. I have just found that mutliple mob encounters are not that common and when I do face them Rampage+Open Wounds makes them trivial regardless of the AGI line. I rely mostly on crafted armor so the extra mit from WIS given the changes to mit with EoF seemed like a good investment. It didn't hurt that I recently got a close to 300 buckler in Kaladim and a nice Legendary 1Her from Fallen Dynasty (the level 61 katana.)
One of the best class write ups hands down. My main is a 70 Brigand and I am currently working on a 49 ranger, which I previously thought had the best writeup but this one takes it hands down. I just dusted the dirt off of my zerker now that my fury is almost 70 and I orignally wanted to build a Zerker to MA or MT in any sitiuation. Because STR seems to come from all types of buffs depending on group setups I opted to go down the WIS with a earth shattering 20 AA's. However after reading over this thread and biting the bullet to yeild the dinner plate on my arm for the first them I decided to try the STA build. My question, if anyone could give some quick advice is with only 20 AA's and shooting for STA 4/8/8/8 how should i distribute the points I have now? Was thinking 1 + STA 4/6/5/4 or 1 + STA 4/8/4/3.
