Immortal tank

[Ysaran]

BG - not great, especially after losing heal. absorb isn't that strong and it being 10 sec means it just gets constantly severed if you're getting beat on. avoidance tactics don't matter in this context. mid 13 is alright but it's just gonna get severed. m1 is good. main trick is terrifying foe which with the gear you're gonna want to use will get you to around 1280 tough (you hit 1050 unbuffed, so 1050 + (472.5/2)) which is def nice that's around 20% less inc dmg vs 1050 tough. remember you're gonna be perma debuffed though

You won't actually gain much/any mitigation from the toughness tactic in that scenario. Toughness is effectively capped by enemy mainstat, it's far better to run a different tactic if you are softcapped to begin with, or to lower you base to a point where you land at around softcap with the tactic active. You waste hundreds of statpoints by significantly overcapping. The tactic is mostly a good opportunity to socket more resist or armor for example.

as far as i can tell toughness also works agains +power

It does. Abilities see only the damage bonus (strength, weapon dps, melee power) and damage reduction (toughness, fortitude), they don't care about the source

[jafh123]

sry to necro but i've been playing around with these sorts of builds again with all the recent tank changes and have come to some very different conclusions. what's already been discussed is probably useful reading for anyone hopping in

so i was wrong about it being ib. mainly i was wrong about chance to crit not mattering (i always forgot to factor in crit dmg multipliers) but i also undervalued absorbs. my current list from worst to best:

BO - worst by far. self heals and aoe str debuff requires hitting which breaks warlord detaunt. absorb is weak. block channel gets interrupted, breaks detaunt and now has cd. no useful morales

BG - not great, especially after losing heal. absorb isn't that strong and it being 10 sec means it just gets constantly severed if you're getting beat on. avoidance tactics don't matter in this context. mid 13 is alright but it's just gonna get severed. m1 is good. main trick is terrifying foe which with the gear you're gonna want to use will get you to around 1280 tough (you hit 1050 unbuffed, so 1050 + (472.5/2)) which is def nice that's around 20% less inc dmg vs 1050 tough. remember you're gonna be perma debuffed though

IB - no more grumble but otherwise decent. can hit around 65% flat dmg reduction with a block proc (detaunt, hc, seasoned vet, shield mastery all multiplicative). free 80 toughness from tactic is great. init and parry buff that doesn't require you to hit is nice and has a great m3 but you can't pump to it so it's only every 90 sec. 2nd jug is great in this context

SM - great absorb in vauls buffer and lots of healing though it all requires you to be attacking (so breaking detaunt on 1 target). this isn't that bad if there's a tank in the attacking group and you wanna keep eagle's flight up anyway (for proccing vauls buffer). raking talons is also good for an extra 10% dmg reduction (multi with detaunt, not additive) from their melee at least. m3 is garbage as it will mass break your detaunts but the leap is really good, can jump to a ranged guy, jug and buy yourself a good amount of time to regen before the melee catches up again

knight - emperors ward is top of class of survivability tactics. vigilance eats a lot of initial pressure and can help you stabilize, long term it can be seen as ~8% dmg reduction. aoe str debuff that doesn't require hitting is ~10% dmg reduction (vs melee at least, but you're spamming htl for sorcs anyway). tough aura lets you run -crit% lini. heal aura is good, 50-60/sec for free. as you're gonna be spamming htl anyway as knight doesn't need to attack you can take the disrupt tactic for 60% disrupt. suns blessing gives you plenty of ap to do this and you have the free tactic slot. m1 is good.

chosen - the king. warped flesh does a huge amount of work when you have some regen behind it, remember absorbs "eat" crits (little more complicated than that but broad strokes), stack together and use toughness. 3 sec refresh means severing is much less of a worry vs 10 second absorbs. flawless armour is 10% dmg reduction (if you consider the most dangerous dps as having an average 100% crit multi.) str, tough and regen auras all the same as knight. m3 is amazing and you can pump to it - in practical terms, you get a free extra health bar every 60 secs as this build only goes to about 8k wounds

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this is just a few months of playing around with them alongside endlessly putting stuff in the dmg calculator. gear for everyone looks like this:

helm, shoulders, gloves, belt, boots, cloak, jewel 1 - warlord (detaunt proc)
body - grimshimmer
jewel 2, 3 & 4 - tough/hp fleshrender
wep - tyranny/glory (regen)
shield - fortress (absorb proc - 3% doesn't sound like much but if you're getting hit by enough people for any of this to matter it will be up all of the time. beats the regen shield)

renown is full futile and fortitude except ib who takes hc instead of fortitude

all talis are toughness

pots are -crit and armour

if anyone thinks i've got something wrong or has any other ideas please jump in, this is all just from toying. a lot of this is based on the following suppositions:

10 toughness = 1% dmg reduction
1% crit reduction = 1% dmg reduction
wounds don't matter cause it's all about making every hit point count
armour doesn't matter that much because so many people ignore it
resists don't matter at all as they all get debuffed to 0 anyway
melee avoidance doesn't matter that much as people just hit you in the back or ignore it (you get enough free from shield block rating now to perma-proc stuff like chosen/knight regen, so don't need any investment)
ranged avoidance is alright but htl provides enough

in game it's just too chaotic to get any solid numbers but these seem about right.

remember aoe root + jug to lose pressure and regen for a few secs. idk if fleeing is worth is especially as chosen, you really just wanna keep building to m3

save your heal and absorb pots for post-morale bomb (you usually survive thanks to the scaling changes.) if you force an organized group (or 2!!!) to coordinate a morale bomb solely on your dumpy ass just consider it a victory

remember procs will kill you anyway because they're stupid un-fun garbage that shouldn't exist as they do

this is all way easier as destro in general as you're not dealing with witchbrew and sorc st

happy not dying

Regarding IB: is the damage reduction from shield mastery added up to the damage reduction from season veteran?

[what63]

BG - not great, especially after losing heal. absorb isn't that strong and it being 10 sec means it just gets constantly severed if you're getting beat on. avoidance tactics don't matter in this context. mid 13 is alright but it's just gonna get severed. m1 is good. main trick is terrifying foe which with the gear you're gonna want to use will get you to around 1280 tough (you hit 1050 unbuffed, so 1050 + (472.5/2)) which is def nice that's around 20% less inc dmg vs 1050 tough. remember you're gonna be perma debuffed though

You won't actually gain much/any mitigation from the toughness tactic in that scenario. Toughness is effectively capped by enemy mainstat, it's far better to run a different tactic if you are softcapped to begin with, or to lower you base to a point where you land at around softcap with the tactic active. You waste hundreds of statpoints by significantly overcapping. The tactic is mostly a good opportunity to socket more resist or armor for example.

as far as i can tell toughness also works agains +power

Of course it does ye, just lumped it in under mainstat. Though at the point where it's relevant you are paying double anyhow, on an investment that is already questionable due to how weak scaling is in this game. You likely reach a point where more armor and resist nets you far more effective health waaaaay before reaching even 900 toughness, for a reason you acknowledged later down in the post, namely procs. Keeping in mind that in RvR you face a lot of AoE specs that run more proc tactics over softcapping stats, lower geared players with less penetration, and plenty of tanks and healers that hit you doing base damage+procs. A very broad selection of attackers, where only a small section will actually be rocking capped stats and full ST builds with the higher scalings.

I don't think any of this changes your analysis much mind you, but it being just a fun hypothetical and all, I would guess that a BG running far less toughness and instead taking the opportunity to run a resist lini (which was buffed) with a few (sprit)resist+armor talismans and fortitude swapped out would fare better. Not by a huge margin, again, but on paper a more optimized approach nonetheless. Resists will only be debuffed to 0 if you let them be, afterall, and that's the point where procs and otherwise fairly harmless DoTs and the likes REALLY start chewing you up. Same goes for armor to some extent, if you let lower penetration attackers aswell hit you at significantly below 75% mit, you will end up taking exponentially more damage from that broader selection of attackers.

Resist lini would likely be good on other non-self buffing classes aswell with the increased value.

[tazdingo]

Regarding IB: is the damage reduction from shield mastery added up to the damage reduction from season veteran?

all flat damage reduction is multiplicative, regardless of source:

guard
"you take only x% damage..."
"opponent will deal only x% damage..."
"reducing the damage they deal to x%..."

my smoothbrain way of calculating this:

100% damage
shield mastery - (100 / 100) * 95 = 95
seasoned vet - (95 / 100) * 85 = 80.75

so the answer is, they almost do. but the more sources of dmg reduction you stack the less effective each individual source becomes. so instead of:

warlord detaunt - 50% less dmg
shield mastery - 5% less dmg
seasoned vet - 15% less dmg
hardy concession - 15% less dmg
= 85% less dmg taken

it actually works out like:

warlord = 50
shield mastery - (50 / 100) * 95 = 47.5
seasoned vet - (47.5 / 100) * 85 = 40.375
hard concession - (40.375 / 100 ) * 85 = 34.3

so 65%~ less damage taken. still good but not 85

this is why in this context it's best to have as many sources of damage reduction that do quasi-stack additively - flat reduction, toughness, -chance to be crit, debuffing enemy mainstatsl, etc. diversification is key because you're not suffering from diminishing gains

Of course it does ye, just lumped it in under mainstat. Though at the point where it's relevant you are paying double anyhow, on an investment that is already questionable due to how weak scaling is in this game. You likely reach a point where more armor and resist nets you far more effective health waaaaay before reaching even 900 toughness, for a reason you acknowledged later down in the post, namely procs. Keeping in mind that in RvR you face a lot of AoE specs that run more proc tactics over softcapping stats, lower geared players with less penetration, and plenty of tanks and healers that hit you doing base damage+procs. A very broad selection of attackers, where only a small section will actually be rocking capped stats and full ST builds with the higher scalings.

I don't think any of this changes your analysis much mind you, but it being just a fun hypothetical and all, I would guess that a BG running far less toughness and instead taking the opportunity to run a resist lini (which was buffed) with a few (sprit)resist+armor talismans and fortitude swapped out would fare better. Not by a huge margin, again, but on paper a more optimized approach nonetheless. Resists will only be debuffed to 0 if you let them be, afterall, and that's the point where procs and otherwise fairly harmless DoTs and the likes REALLY start chewing you up. Same goes for armor to some extent, if you let lower penetration attackers aswell hit you at significantly below 75% mit, you will end up taking exponentially more damage from that broader selection of attackers.

Resist lini would likely be good on other non-self buffing classes aswell with the increased value.

- actually i'm completely wrong, the builder i'm using didn't have fleshrenders so i added them manually and forgot the update the resists. with a resist buff from linis they look like this:

spirit - 575
elemental - 652
corp - 780

... and with a knight/chosen aura they look something like this (i forgot the builder scaling and can't launch rn):

spirit - 795
elemental - 852
corp - 980

... which then assuming debuffs topping out at about 400 is:

spirit - 400
elemental - 450
corp - 580

i'm not certain of how resistance scaling work but that's at least 20 - 25% in each? in which case knight and chosen 100% run the resist aura over strength

progress!

- tested, it's actually closer to 30-35%

[tazdingo]

some more thinking and experimenting done on this. one thing i've been testing are the procs pilfer and presevation:

preservation - on being hit 10% chance to increase wounds by 110 every 20 seconds

heals like bo/sm proc, so essentially a 1100 heal. does not refresh itself. let's say it takes an average of 2 seconds to proc, so an average of 200hp/4. can be found on 4 piece conq

pilfer - 10% chance to steal 150 health on being hit

this should be great as it has no ICD and does not break the warlord detaunt. if you have a full group beating on you, and assuming a hasted dps "hits" over once per second and a regular char less for an average of about once per sec, that's a 60% chance to proc per seond for an average of 6 150hp procs over 10 seconds. this means about 360hp/4, or about 2 whole extra grimshimmers. you can get it on weps and 4 piece onslaught

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for preservation you'd be giving up warlord, which means it's only viable for IB running the full sv/sm/hc build. still I can't really make it fit. the reason I mention it is that it's an option if grumble comes back and in a form that works for this sort of thing, then IB is worth considering again

as for pilfer whilst it looks great as it actually gets stronger the more people are attacking you, i just can't make it fit in any build. the 4pc onslaught is out as warlord proc is too strong, so you'd have to get it from a weapon. the barrier proc on shields is also very innately strong with an average hp/4 when getting beat on by a full group of about 300, and afaik pilfer is only found on 2h weps (i've checked all subj/fort/sent/epic/ruin)

chosen has the goldilocks option, with the sent weapon "harrower" having both pilfer and barrier. however this has a few issues:

- cannot run destined for victory with a 2H which is important for reaching chosen's amazing m3
- this build cannot really invest in avoidance and with a 2H proccing heal aura is gonna be difficult. with the passive block from shield rating it procs pretty much all of the time vs a full group, averaging 240hp/4
- passive block and HTL spam isn't nothing, especially if you can wedge yourself into a corner

so whilst I haven't found a way to integrate them there is some stuff to think about, and some future potential for IB to use them. perhaps there is some unicorn build i'm missing but i've checked every weapon proc I know of. the main hand slot is the weakest in the build but unfortunately there are no great procs on any as far as I can tell. the 3% reduced chance to be crit fortress is always a safe bet and lately i've been trying to make the epic AP proc vitalize work for extra htl spam. it seems OK but can't keep it up indefinitely like the BO combo

[Zxul]

pilfer - 10% chance to steal 150 health on being hit

On the side note, last time I checked Pilfer was changed to be mitigated by armor.

[tazdingo]

pilfer - 10% chance to steal 150 health on being hit

On the side note, last time I checked Pilfer was changed to be mitigated by armor.

ah, good to know I only tested it in pve. i guess as this build has 0 armour pen you could on average half its effectiveness then

[Stinksuit]

pilfer - 10% chance to steal 150 health on being hit

On the side note, last time I checked Pilfer was changed to be mitigated by armor.

ah, good to know I only tested it in pve. i guess as this build has 0 armour pen you could on average half its effectiveness then

Yeah pilfer after the changes does very little dmg most of the time

[vanbuinen77]

Warlord detaunt - 25% less dmg for 5 sec

Resists matter vs big magic damage and vs procs

Chance to be crit matters, as it gives more effective hp the more you have it vs high crit classes

Pilfer is still good

Preservation is still bugged at 800 instead of 1100

[akisnaakkeli]

On the side note, last time I checked Pilfer was changed to be mitigated by armor.

ah, good to know I only tested it in pve. i guess as this build has 0 armour pen you could on average half its effectiveness then

Yeah pilfer after the changes does very little dmg most of the time

On my Zealot Pilfer does 30 dmg/30 heal or so vs the true dmg 150 it used to do. And not sure if breaks detaunt now, but it didnt when it was 150 dmg/heal. I now need 4-6 procs to get 150 dmg/heal out of it and this makes it useless. I mean on healers probably only thing thats worse proc is the 2% 360 dmg proc on some of the sentinel wpns.