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[Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

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Grimbur
Posts: 25

[Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#1 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 1:24 pm

Hello guyz,
Groumf here, IB 81 and theorycraft lover.

I often saw posts named "Toughness or Wounds for Tanks ?"
So, I decided to make some tests yesterday with my toon to try to answer this question on my own.
I wanted to test the real influence of Toughness in the damage mitigation.

First, let's focus on the basics of mitigation:

As you all know, when you hit an enemy, a damage line appears in the combat log
Your skill hits Trucmuche for 155 (165 mitigated)
Basically, it means that whenever you land this skill (with your current offensive stat value (str/int)), the sum of the damage and mitigation will always be strictly identical (here 320) (except for crits). It is just the damage/mitigation repartition that will vary

On a tank, you will see:
Your skill hits BigTank for 15 (305 mitigated)

On a squishy dps, you will see:
Your skill hits Squishy 285 (35 mitigated)

There are many things that can alter this "max" value:
- The level of your opponent, Bolstering.
- Your offensive stat (str/int) being buffed/debuffed
- You are suffering some kind of damage reduction (guard, champion challenge ...) or augmentation (taunt, tactic, etc ...)

How is the mitigation computed ?

I dont have the real mathematical formula. I found many on the web but none fits exactly my own results.
But anyway, we still know lots of things concerning what's inside this formula.
We know that, for the defender, Toughness is used and Armor/Resists are used depending on the kind of damage (Physical/Magical).
We also know what is important for the attacker, such as Weapon skill that reduces the defenser's armor but the attacker's side is not my point today since I want to understand how toughness works.

So, in "Your skill hits Trucmuche for 155 (165 mitigated)", we know that this "165" is created from both toughness and armor/resist. Ok.

So, what did I do for my tests ?

First, I removed all my stuff containing resists.
After that, my dwarf had 0 resist and 665 toughness. Perfect set for testing magical damage.
Then I ask my wife to bring her archmage and duel me. She has 632 Intelligence.

I ask her to hit me with her biggest DD (0 resist, 665 Toughness)

Archmage's Radiant Lance hits you for 477 damage. (313 mitigated)

Ok, here we are ... Without any resist, I know that this mitigation is 100% toughness related.
That is a 39.6% damage reduction and I am pretty pleased about it.
Indeed, Tanks stack a lot of Toughness, exactly for that purpose. Survive and reduce all incoming damage. Great.

Then, I ask her to hit me with her biggest DoT (0 resist, 665 Toughness)

Archmage's Law of Conductivity hits you for 322 damage. (29 mitigated)

hmmm ... What was that ? it is only a 8.2% reduction ?
I thought it would be been exactly the same as for the DD and well ... clearly not. Damn.

So next, I decided to decrease my toughness even more and I reached 140, then tested again (0 resist, 140 Toughness)

Archmage's Law of Conductivity hits you for 345 damage. (6 mitigated)

Woww ... between 140 and 665, there is a 525-points difference. That is just huge.
And what did this big boost bring me ?
The damage taken went from 345 to ... 322. Yeaahh ... Great ! ohh no wait, that sucks !

Who wants to spend 525 points in a stat that has so little importance ?
Not me definitely.

I want to add that I did the exact same tests with physical DoTs and the result were just the same.
So it is not a Physical/Magical difference. It is just a DoT thing.

Toughness mitigates DoTs by a ridiculously weak amount. Period.

Conclusion

I really do believe that this is a bug. So, i will still hope for a fix.
But I could understand that all of this is working just fine and that the devs decided that Toughness would work incredibly badly against DoTs for some reason.

If it is the case, they have to be aware that this call impacted everyone (since everyone has toughness) but It definitely impacted far more the only archetype whose primary stat is Toughness, an archetype where all the defensive sets contain tons of Toughness: Tanks.

So, while waiting for an hypothetical fix ? What to do ?
Well ... replace all my toughness talismans by wounds talismans. remove my +160 toughness tactic and forget that toughness ever existed.
Because, I can already hear "look at this guy compaining about toughness and dots ... dots are not the only source of damage. Live with it man. Toughness is still great"

Well, there are 4 different types of damage in this game:
- Morale
- Add Damage (Wiz add-damage and flame shields, DoK add-damage, WE Witchbrew and Kisses, Marau gifts, Weapon procs, etc, etc ...)
- DoT
- DD

Toughness doesnt mitigate Morale. In fact, nothing can improve or reduce Morales.
Toughness doesnt mitigate add damages. That sounds strange but since the offensive stat of the attacker is not even used in this damage computation, it seems pretty logical as well.
Rest are DoTs and DD and now we know that DoTs scale down ridiculously with Toughness.
So, Toughness is great against DD ... and useless against pretty much everything else.
Wounds, on the other hand, works fine against everything.

So, I am fine with the idea to switch to Wounds but I am not fine with the fact that all my defensive sets stack tons of this miserable and useless stat that is totally ignored by a huge portion of the damage that hit my toon.

So, when you face a 1k+ Toughness Tank, remember this:
- Hit him with DD and you will face a living Wall
- Hit him with DoTs and you will face a fat naked baby

Finally, a last point that make me think that it is a bug a little bit more:
Toughness works badly against dots, ok ... but not the same "badly" against all dots.
The longer the DoT, the more miserable Toughness is.
Personnaly, I have the feeling that the mitigation it should have (if it was the same as a DD) is divided by the number of ticks of the DoT.

Thank you for reading and remove all Toughness guyz !

Groumf, DAMMAZ KRON !!!
Last edited by Grimbur on Fri Oct 18, 2019 4:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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zachary
Posts: 71

Re: [Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#2 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 1:35 pm

Thank you! I have heard many times "DoTs ignore toughness" but it's nice to have _actual data_. I truly appreciate your efforts!
Xand*r*nius is still trying to Learn To Play

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Acidic
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Re: [Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#3 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 2:03 pm

Nice post, would be nice to have feedback if the results here are according to plan or bug.
But nice post even if from a dorf

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oaliaen
Posts: 1201

Re: [Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#4 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 2:17 pm

following the logic, toughness is still a good way for order tanks...
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Haskr
Posts: 532

Re: [Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#5 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 4:04 pm

Interesting, thanks for the testing!

heybaws
Posts: 124

Re: [Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#6 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 4:41 pm

Toughness reducing TOTAL damage of dot, not every tick.

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Grimbur
Posts: 25

Re: [Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#7 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:12 pm

Heybaws, I get your point.
But since Toughness works in direct opposition with the offensive stat of the attacker, it would mean that the offensive stat would up the DoT damage the same way Toughness reduces it.
And it is not the case.
Increasing the offensive stat works all right with DoTs.

I did a test with 284 Int with my wife and I receive 248(-17)
But with 632 Int, I receive 334(-17) which was a cool augmentation for the DoT.

Groumf, Dammaz Kron !!!

Sulorie
Posts: 7219

Re: [Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#8 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:22 pm

heybaws wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 4:41 pm Toughness reducing TOTAL damage of dot, not every tick.
True, additionally Dots can be removed and therefore are no guaranteed damage. As it is slow damage over time, it is only better than direct damage, when the target gets no heal.
The higher mitigation value on direct damage means, that you can raise the damage with debuffs even further.
Dying is no option.

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hogun
Posts: 289

Re: [Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#9 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:32 pm

Actually, the question is, is it a bug or is it normal?
then it is strange that there is a variation in mitigation according to the duration of the DOT
Last edited by hogun on Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ekundu01
Posts: 306

Re: [Theorycrafting] Toughness is broken (or useless) for DoTs

Post#10 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:39 pm

heybaws wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 4:41 pm Toughness reducing TOTAL damage of dot, not every tick.
Something still seems off even if that is the case.

This dot ticks like 5 times in the duration meaning at 351 base damage per tick equals total tool tip damage around 1755 damage over 15secs. With toughness only reducing damage by 29 per tick that is 145 total reduction due to toughness yet the radiant lance damage was 790 damage and toughness reduced 313 damage. I don't think toughness is reducing from total dot damage either.

To take it a step further if that amount of toughness is mitigating 39% like it did for Radiant lance then if it did the same for the dot at 1755 total damage a 39% mitigation would be 684 damage reduced that should equal 136 damage mitigated per tick by toughness not 29 per tic.
Last edited by Ekundu01 on Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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