KoB build and RA's for S/B

[Penril]

Whatever you do, use Slice Through. On Destro, the thing i hate the most is being pretty much perma-snared by Order. And KotBS does Curses (meaning, Dok can't cleanse this).

I would go with Jail's spec.

[Halhammer]

Whatever you do, use Slice Through.

Goes without sayin.

What I don't know about is, the EA nerf.

No nerf yet but from what I hear it's gonna be 5% each (EA and DT).

@Keyser: I dont really see a con against toughness there from all you're sayin. If we're talkin S+B def tank, and I was under the impression we did, then stackin armour is just not gonna work. Period.

[Sigvard]

Whatever you do, use Slice Through.

Goes without sayin.

What I don't know about is, the EA nerf.

No nerf yet but from what I hear it's gonna be 5% each (EA and DT).

@Keyser: I dont really see a con against toughness there from all you're sayin. If we're talkin S+B def tank, and I was under the impression we did, then stackin armour is just not gonna work. Period.

Think most people who played S/B tank in WAR agree that toughness is a must to reduce damage pre the armor calculation no matter how much defense skills (or armor) you have. And later try to stack some Fortitude to counter the Meele Power so it doesn't feel like you're running around in a robe.

Thanks for the heads up on the nerf, but it sounds strange if they nerf when we not even in T4 yet. That would be proof that the game is controlled by the screaming and whineing people.

Sigvard

[Annaise16]

With regard to a couple of the topics:

When comparing armor and toughness, the question is: Should you add extra armor talis or should it be extra toughness talis? The answer depends on what you are being hit by. If its primarily physical damage, you add armor up to approximately the 120% mitigation value. If it's casters or a combination of damage types that is killing you, you add a combination of toughness plus Wounds, as the difference between survivability provided by these two stats is small. Keep in mind that a kotbs can always run a resists aura and that this will provide some guaranteed mitigation against casters that no other Order class has.

The order in which mitigation is applied, toughness before armor, is irrelevant in this situation. Anyone who argues otherwise has not understood the choice that is being made. Check this for yourself if you are unsure.

When deciding whether or not to use Rugged, the armor versus toughness argument is not relevant. You are NOT choosing between Rugged and an armor tactic.


Choose to stack either block or parry, but not both. If you are always going to use a shield, stacking Block will almost always be the better option. But that does not mean you have to spend renown points on it. Try to get your Block percentage bonuses from gear choices instead.


Slice Through and the punt tactic should probably be your first two tactic choices as a s/b kotbs. Every other tactic choice is situational.


The choice betwee EA and the kd really comes down to the scale of the fight. EA is an aoe tactic that is going to be useful in fights where there are lot of opponents in a small area. The kd is most useful in small-scale fights. Which choice most suits your play-style? Personally, in the current situation, I would take the kd instead of the stagger. A 3-second stagger isn't that useful.


P.S. I would be surprised if EA and DT are nerfed. The arguments against them have looked only at the tactics in isolation and have not looked at the big picture. This is especially true for DT. The question that I have never seen addressed is: Does a group with a kotbs running DT do more dps than a group with an IB or SM (or 2H kotbs not running DT)? A s/b kotbs does much less dps than the other Order tanks. The extra dps that the group derives from DT may not outweigh the dps difference between the alternate tank and the s/b kotbs. For example, DT might provide the group with an extra 300 dps. It is quite possible that an IB or SM would do 300 more dps than the s/b kotbs. So the group as a whole is doing the same dps whatever choice of tank is used.

[Luth]

Whatever you do, use Slice Through.

This. It's one of the best tactics in the game, totally annoying for the other side and still absolutely underestimated/ignored by most kotbs players.

The question that I have never seen addressed is: Does a group with a kotbs running DT do more dps than a group with an IB or SM (or 2H kotbs not running DT)? A s/b kotbs does much less dps than the other Order tanks. The extra dps that the group derives from DT may not outweigh the dps difference between the alternate tank and the s/b kotbs. For example, DT might provide the group with an extra 300 dps. It is quite possible that an IB or SM would do 300 more dps than the s/b kotbs. So the group as a whole is doing the same dps whatever choice of tank is used.

I still think that, even if the DPS output would be equal below the line, the knight is the better choice. The other tanks are forced to attack as much as possible to hold that DPS value; if they refrain for a few seconds to do some "tanky-support-actions", they are automatically worse imo.
The kotbs can fulfil the tank support role and knockdown /-back, stagger targets + HtL etc. while his damage buff for the group is running in the background (the permanent/automatic buffs and debuffs from the auras add to that too).
I also feel that i have generally a better overview about the whole combat situation on my knight, while i suffer sometimes from "tunnel vision" (aka melee DD-syndrome) on my IB, which makes me likely a worse tank on muh IB.

Unfortunatelly playing my knight is incredibly boring at the same time. Coincidence? I don't think so!

[Lexxx20]

What's RA?..

[Sigvard]

What's RA?..

http://waronlinebuilder.org/#renown

Sigvard

[Annaise16]

[

The question that I have never seen addressed is: Does a group with a kotbs running DT do more dps than a group with an IB or SM (or 2H kotbs not running DT)? A s/b kotbs does much less dps than the other Order tanks. The extra dps that the group derives from DT may not outweigh the dps difference between the alternate tank and the s/b kotbs. For example, DT might provide the group with an extra 300 dps. It is quite possible that an IB or SM would do 300 more dps than the s/b kotbs. So the group as a whole is doing the same dps whatever choice of tank is used.

I still think that, even if the DPS output would be equal below the line, the knight is the better choice. The other tanks are forced to attack as much as possible to hold that DPS value; if they refrain for a few seconds to do some "tanky-support-actions", they are automatically worse imo.
The kotbs can fulfil the tank support role and knockdown /-back, stagger targets + HtL etc. while his damage buff for the group is running in the background (the permanent/automatic buffs and debuffs from the auras add to that too).
I also feel that i have generally a better overview about the whole combat situation on my knight, while i suffer sometimes from "tunnel vision" (aka melee DD-syndrome) on my IB, which makes me likely a worse tank on muh IB.

Unfortunatelly playing my knight is incredibly boring at the same time. Coincidence? I don't think so!

Yes. This is the strength of Dirty Tricks. It allows the kotbs to contribute to the group's dps in situations where the tank is unable to assist. It is also essential for the low-rr and poorly-geared kotbs, along with those running very defensive, low-dps builds.

But these are the situations where the group's overall dps is nerfed because the kotbs is contributing next to nothing. DT does not make up for a lack of assist-dps from your tank, although it will make up for some of it.

[Keyser]

@Keyser: I dont really see a con against toughness there from all you're sayin. If we're talkin S+B def tank, and I was under the impression we did, then stackin armour is just not gonna work. Period.

Ok, lets do the math.

1. Lets compare a 150 armor tali to a 21 toughness tali. So lets assume some random mdd attacks you with an instant ability. We gonna use this formula
inc dmg = base dmg + (main hand weapon dps value + 0.45 * off-hand weapon dps value + damage bonus - toughness/5) *(1-armor/(lvl * 110)) * 1,1
(I took it from viewtopic.php?f=75&t=13150 and the formula for physical resistance is coming from http://warhammeronline.wikia.com/wiki/Armor).

Since the base dmg is just additive we are going to leave it out here.
Furthermore, we set x = main hand weapon dps value + 0.45 * off-hand weapon dps value + damage bonus.

We are lvl40 and at the beginning we wear annihilator without any talis. Our opponent has a solid 40% armor penetration. Our toughness will be around 450 I guess.

Now lets calculate the difference between an additional armor tali and toughness tali depending on x:

difference = (x - 450/5) * (1 - (3136 + 150)/(40 * 110)*0.6) * 1,1 - (x - (450+21)/5) * (1 - 3136/(40 * 110) * 0.6) * 1,1 = 4,67 - 0,0225 * x

with root x* = 208 (by Wolfram Alpha), i.e. if x is smaller than 208, toughness would be better.

Now the same for mdds with armor penetration of...
30%: x* = 178
50%: x* = 248
60%: x* = 310
70%: x* = 412
80%: x* = 618
90%: x* = 1234.

Now we need some kind of weapon dps for T4. I do not recall it from live but I guess it will be approximately 60dps.
Then we can read our results as follows:
If our opponents str+melee bonus is larger than (x* - 60 * (1 + 0,45)) * 5 one 150 armor tali in a blank annihilator set is better than a 21 toughness tali.
For annihilator that means toughness will be better against mdds with at least slightly more than 50% armor penetration. For the moment I cannot say if mdds are going to slot WS immediately when they get annihilator. If they do and reach that mark (eg mara), we need to take a closer look at their remaining stats. Until then, armor is the way to go.

2. If you want to be above the armor cap at lvl40 when a solid random physical dd with 40% armor penetration hits you, you need at least approximately 5,5k armor. Annihilator will give you only 3136 armor.

The order in which mitigation is applied, toughness before armor, is irrelevant in this situation. Anyone who argues otherwise has not understood the choice that is being made. Check this for yourself if you are unsure.

That is not true. It is highly relevant. Some example:
- your opponent has a 200 damage bonus
- your mitigation by toughness is 100
- your mitigation by armor is 50%

Then some part of the dmg calcalution looks approximately like this:
inc dmg = (200 - 100) * 0.5 = 200*0.5 - 100*0.5
(where I left out weapon dps, cast time multiplicator, base dmg, etc... ).

Thus our effective mitigation by toughness is just 100*0.5 and not just plain 100. If the order of mitigation would be the other way around, then I would not care about it. But as it is now, the gain from toughness highly depends on the order of mitigation and on armor as well.

When deciding whether or not to use Rugged, the armor versus toughness argument is not relevant. You are NOT choosing between Rugged and an armor tactic.

You misunderstood the first page. At first I was arguing that coordination is better than rugged and afterwards it drifted towards a toughness vs armor discussion.


Edit: If you see any mistake in the calculation, do not hesitate and tell me.

[Sigvard]

@Keyser: I dont really see a con against toughness there from all you're sayin. If we're talkin S+B def tank, and I was under the impression we did, then stackin armour is just not gonna work. Period.

Ok, lets do the math.

1. Lets compare a 150 armor tali to a 21 toughness tali. So lets assume some random mdd attacks you with an instant ability. We gonna use this formula
inc dmg = base dmg + (main hand weapon dps value + 0.45 * off-hand weapon dps value + damage bonus - toughness/5) *(1-armor/(lvl * 110)) * 1,1
(I took it from viewtopic.php?f=75&t=13150 and the formula for physical resistance is coming from http://warhammeronline.wikia.com/wiki/Armor).

Since the base dmg is just additive we are going to leave it out here.
Furthermore, we set x = main hand weapon dps value + 0.45 * off-hand weapon dps value + damage bonus.

We are lvl40 and at the beginning we wear annihilator without any talis. Our opponent has a solid 40% armor penetration. Our toughness will be around 450 I guess.

Now lets calculate the difference between an additional armor tali and toughness tali depending on x:

difference = (x - 450/5) * (1 - (3136 + 150)/(40 * 110)*0.6) * 1,1 - (x - (450+21)/5) * (1 - 3136/(40 * 110) * 0.6) * 1,1 = 4,67 - 0,0225 * x

with root x* = 208 (by Wolfram Alpha), i.e. if x is smaller than 208, toughness would be better.

Now the same for mdds with armor penetration of...
30%: x* = 178
50%: x* = 248
60%: x* = 310
70%: x* = 412
80%: x* = 618
90%: x* = 1234.

Now we need some kind of weapon dps for T4. I do not recall it from live but I guess it will be approximately 60dps.
Then we can read our results as follows:
If our opponents str+melee bonus is larger than (x* - 60 * (1 + 0,45)) * 5 one 150 armor tali in a blank annihilator set is better than a 21 toughness tali.
For annihilator that means toughness will be better against mdds with at least slightly more than 50% armor penetration. For the moment I cannot say if mdds are going to slot WS immediately when they get annihilator. If they do and reach that mark (eg mara), we need to take a closer look at their remaining stats. Until then, armor is the way to go.

2. If you want to be above the armor cap at lvl40 when a solid random physical dd with 40% armor penetration hits you, you need at least approximately 5,5k armor. Annihilator will give you only 3136 armor.

The order in which mitigation is applied, toughness before armor, is irrelevant in this situation. Anyone who argues otherwise has not understood the choice that is being made. Check this for yourself if you are unsure.

That is not true. It is highly relevant. Some example:
- your opponent has a 200 damage bonus
- your mitigation by toughness is 100
- your mitigation by armor is 50%

Then some part of the dmg calcalution looks approximately like this:
inc dmg = (200 - 100) * 0.5 = 200*0.5 - 100*0.5
(where I left out weapon dps, cast time multiplicator, base dmg, etc... ).

Thus our effective mitigation by toughness is just 100*0.5 and not just plain 100. If the order of mitigation would be the other way around, then I would not care about it. But as it is now, the gain from toughness highly depends on the order of mitigation and on armor as well.

When deciding whether or not to use Rugged, the armor versus toughness argument is not relevant. You are NOT choosing between Rugged and an armor tactic.

You misunderstood the first page. At first I was arguing that coordination is better than rugged and afterwards it drifted towards a toughness vs armor discussion.


Edit: If you see any mistake in the calculation, do not hesitate and tell me.

And still when you miss that parry you go down like an Irish ********* on payday

Anyway after all your feedback I will try this one (for T3)
http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=kot ... 2:;0:0:0:0:

- Sigvard