[ARCHIVE] 1.1.5 Sith Assassin/Jedi Shadow Tanking Compendium

[lgw]

I ran some numbers for DPS comparison for the hybrid build (using a slightly modified version as 23 Dark / 16 Mad / 2 Dark). It came out pretty respectable with only 15% behind the supposedly top DPS builds when asked to DPS and not tank an encounter (hence using DPS gear, etc).


Don't quote giant posts, please. Only quote the part you're responding to, if any. ~Kor

[Pijinz]

Hey guys.

I was just looking at Assassinate with the formula posted.

The thing is Damage per Force isn't quite accurate. In WoW a Rogue would do auto-attacks on top of any Energy based damage, so you could use Damage per Energy to compare pretty much everything. Here we only do Saber Strikes while we're waiting for Force.

What I thought was to consider each ability as a combo of itself and a number of Saber Strikes needed to make the combo Force neutral. You then divide by the total GCDs to get a Damage per GCD of each ability, knowing that after using the main ability you're going to be stranded while you regen, which should be a fair comparison.

Take Assassinate at 25 Force and assume 15.6 Force per GCD. You're left with a deficit of 9.4 Force after using it, which is about 0.6 Saber Strikes. Thus the real damage from Assassinate is (Asn + 0.6 SS) / 1.6 Damage per GCD.

What we really want to compare this to is a full combo of Thrash, Shock and Force Lightning, since Assassinate doesn't proc Energize. Over time you'd expect to see two Thrashes per Energize, so the whole combo is effectively six Thrash, three Shock and one Force Lightning. That's 285 Force (2/2 Torment) over 11 GCDs, leaving a deficit of 113.4 Force, or about 7.27 Saber Strikes.

Damage per GCD = (6 Thr + 3 Shk + FL + 7.27 SS) / 18.27

Gonna take Igw's base stats (all I have), only with 570 MBonus due to Dark Charge. Ignoring armour.

SS = 1253.3
Thr = 1909.6
Shk (Energized) = 3570
FL (3 HD) = 5487.7
Asn = 3584.9

Thr/Shk/FL combo = (6 * 1909.6 + 3 * 3570 + 5487.7 + 7.27 * 1253.3) / 18.27 = 2012.4

Asn combo = (3584.9 + 0.6 * 1253.3) / 1.6 = 2710.6

So Assassinate looks like the clear winner.

The 15.6 Force per GCD is inaccurate obviously, as it could be as much as 18.6 with Lightning Reflexes. Best I can think here is to work out a minimum and maximum figure for each ability/combo, and check for any overlaps. At 18.6 FpGCD the Thrash combo would be on 2158.6, so we can be sure that Assassinate is always on top.

BTW Igw, I notice you're using MBonus = FBonus as standard. Is that something that's likely to be roughly true for any given gear level? Like we get them in equal amounts from Willpower or something. Would be nice to do away with so many variables.

[Kaedis]

Honestly, that's probably the best way to look at force efficiency, Pijinz. I think I'll steal this for Deception analysis as well.

Incidentally, you can assume that FBonus will actually be much higher than MBonus due to the added Force Power on your saber and focus/shield. Everything else that contributes to MBonus also contributes to FBonus, so the difference would be equal to the additional FBonus you gain from the saber/offhand combo times 1.05 (for the SW buff).

[Dreadnaught]

Taking a look on high-end operation tanking gear, all pieces has +absorption on it. My question is...looking at this
is still Shield > Defense > Absorption our priority in tanking stat? or our best stat is Absorption right now?

Thank you.

[Alratan]

Not quite - it depends which gear you look at. Columi, Tionese and Rakata all have quite different stat distributions, so my current belief is that the developers are just playing pin the tail on the donkey when it comes to stats on gear. When it comes to priorities, yes, the stat priority is still pretty much that due to the smoothing bonus Shield would give over Defense, and over Absorption. Not only that, but Absorption becomes vastly more valuable the higher shield chance we have in the first place.

As a side note, due to diminishing returns, having lots of absorption on gear actually makes you less likely to want to mod for it anyway, and the diminishing returns also means that at a high enough value of one stat it's far better to stack another, anyway. We simply having worked out what those convenient points are, yet, in terms of surivability increase per stat point.

[LagunaD]

(12-18-2011 03:41 AM)Dreadnaught Wrote:  Taking a look on high-end operation tanking gear, all pieces has +absorption on it. My question is...looking at this
is still Shield > Defense > Absorption our priority in tanking stat? or our best stat is Absorption right now?

(12-18-2011 07:55 PM)Alratan Wrote:  As a side note, due to diminishing returns, having lots of absorption on gear actually makes you less likely to want to mod for it anyway, and the diminishing returns also means that at a high enough value of one stat it's far better to stack another, anyway. We simply having worked out what those convenient points are, yet, in terms of surivability increase per stat point.

I wouldn't say it's a question of figuring out anything. We know all the relationships, and they are not all that complicated (as these things go). If you tell me all your stats, a spreadsheet can tell you precisely how much each of Defense, Shield or Absorb will increase your survivability.

I posted some contour graphs earlier in the thread showing how the optimal selection of stats can change depending on how many points you have to play with.

But another thing those graphs showed was that there was a pretty wide range of choices which all give nearly the same result. In other words, if you simply divided your points randomly between the 3 possibilities, you would still be within 1-2% of the optimum stat distribution.

If you can't/don't do a careful analysis, it is hard to go badly wrong by simply dividing your secondary stat budget evenly across the three relevant choices.

[joshuapd53]

Just a quick question I hit 50 yesterday on my Assassin. I was wondering what a good number is for health, armor rating, shield chance, defense chance to start doing hard mode flashpoints?

Right now I am sitting at

15,580 heatlh
Armor Rating 5883 with a reduction of 37.26 %
Defense Chance is 24.68%
Shield Chance is 27.30%
Accuracy is 94.69%

Any help would be appreciated. I have a 3 piece's of Daily commendation armor mod's, I made my light saber hilt purple raiting 124.

Menacer
Rakata Mind Prison
Guild: Because Good Is Dumb

[Pred]

I believe a "geared" tank should have 20k hp.

PS - love your guild name

[joshuapd53]

(12-19-2011 09:15 AM)Pred Wrote:  I believe a "geared" tank should have 20k hp.

PS - love your guild name

By "geared" do you mean after Hard Modes or before? Because I dunno how I could get that much with what is available to me, being daily commendation items, and my Artifice crafted stuff.

So is that 20k before you do any Hard Modes, or after doing some?

Thanks

Menacer
Rakata Mind Prison
Guild: Because Good Is Dumb

[Pijinz]

*****
Edit: updated spreadsheet and mild priority changes can be found here: http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Sit...2#pid12362
*****

Hi again guys. I've made a little spreadsheet expanding on the ideas of my previous post: http://www.mediafire.com/?a3prie2j8e3our8 (please excuse ODS format, it's all I have).

Base stat inputs are Weapon, MBonus, FBonus, Melee Crit, Force Crit and Surge, and then additional values for min and max FpGCD. I've gone with 14.35 < FpGCD < 17.85 with the default values; this is to account for Dark Ward upkeep. I figured since it doesn't do any damage, is off the GCD, has a variable upkeep cost (anywhere from 10 Force per 12 seconds to 10 Force per 20 seconds) and is absolute top priority always, it might as well be considered a constant energy drain rather than an ability in its own right.

Damage formulas are adjustable to take care of differences in skill tree specs. This basically assumes a 31/0/10 spec though; I've not looked at anything like Death Field or Crushing Darkness. Each ability also has a threat mod, so that for instance Wither has a 1.5 multiplier when speaking solely in terms of threat. Note that the tooltip for Electrify suggests that Shock has an additional 1.15 modifier for threat, but I don't know if this is accurate (all the sources I've read suggest that all threat modifiers where mentioned should be 1.5). Change that if you're unhappy with it. I've ignored the 1.5 from Dark Charge just because this should be the same for every ability, and this is only supposed to be a comparison; you can add another 50% to everything if you want.

Each ability has a min and max value based on the two FpGCD bounds. To cope with overlaps I'm going to have to assume abilities are reasonably well behaved with respect to Force regen. In particular, if you have, say, min(X) < min(Y) < max(X) < max(Y), it should be reasonable to expect X < Y. I can't think of any reason this wouldn't be the case within realistic inputs. However, what is almost certainly possible is something like min(X) < min(Y) < max(Y) < max(X), in which case there's no way to know for sure what is greater. Luckily that doesn't appear with the inputs I'm using, but if it does crop up you'll just have to use your judgement (in such a case it probably doesn't matter too much what you do).

First column Thrash, Assassinate and Maul. I must have messed up somewhere in my last calculation, because Assassinate is even better than I thought. It beats everything except heavy AoE; even Force Lightning with 3 HD stacks isn't as good. Maul is just there for comparison; it might be of interest for PvP or something.

Second column Shock, Energized Shock and "Thr/EnShk", meaning "Thrash until Energize, then Shock". Notice that Shock > Thrash, but that Thr/EnShk > Shock. Also note Thr/EnShk > Maul, which henceforth confirms the latter to the dustbin: even if you've lost aggro and are able to use Maul, it isn't worth using over Thrash.

Next, Force Lightning, where the number in brackets is the number of stacks of Harnessed Darkness. More stacks is significant extra damage of course.

TC is "Thrash Combo", meaning the priority FL(3) -> EnShk -> Thr, which is the presumed normal single target strategy (it's heavily implied by the skill tree). To test this, TC(1) and TC(2) represent the same combo finishing on FL(1) and FL(2). We see clearly that TC > TC(2) > TC(1), so we can be assured that: it always makes sense to gather up three charges of HD before using FL.

On the other hand, Shk(3)/FL is three non-energized Shocks followed by an FL(3). This is a hypothetical combo due to the cooldown on Shock, but makes for an interesting comparison. Notice Shk(3)/FL is very close to TC in damage. In fact, if the +15% threat on Shock is correct, Shk(3)/FL actually outperforms TC. What this means in real terms is: if Shock comes off cooldown and you've yet to proc Energize, using Shock instead of Thrash then continuing the combo as normal is virtually identical damage. Even though Thr/EnShk > Shock, using Shock speeds up the combo giving you more FL(3)s over time, which makes up the damage difference.

I presume there's some sort of duration on HD, in which case using a non-energized Shock to keep the combo going will certainly be an improvement. The comparison here would be Shk(3)/FL versus Thr/EnShk. Missing a HD timer is a considerable damage loss.

Fifth and sixth columns are Lacerate and LC ("Lacerate Combo"), with the numbers in brackets representing the number of targets. LC is just like TC but with Thrash replaced by Lacerate. I've gone with LagunaD's observation that Lacerate has a 50% chance to proc Energize per target, and adjusted the length of the combo accordingly. We see that: TC wins on one or two targets, LC wins on three targets, and Lacerate on its own wins on five (and six or more, by projection). Four targets is more interesting, with Lacerate and LC nearly exactly the same. If the threat value on Shock is correct, LC comes out ahead of Lacerate for four targets, and you might expect this to be preferable due to the extra healing from FL(3). On the other hand, if there's any chance we might miss the HD duration (we'll be short on Force against 4 opponents due to Wither and Discharge; see next paragraph), Lacerate spam might be the safer option.

Seventh and eighth columns are Wither and Discharge, versus the given number of targets. Here we're interested in whether we should cast these on cooldown, or just to refresh debuffs. To see this we need to compare them to the main combo used on the same number of targets. In other words, for 1-2 targets we compare to TC, 3-4 to LC and 5 to Lacerate. The numbers show that: Wither and Discharge are both a damage loss against one or two targets, and a damage gain against three or more. Wither is also a threat gain against two targets, so you may wish to use it on cooldown here as well.

Based on all of this, the priority should look something like:

Dark Ward -> Debuffs -> Assassinate -> Main Combo

where "Debuffs" means:

Refresh where needed, for 1-2 targets
Cast on cooldown, for 3+ targets

and "Main Combo" means:

FL(3) -> EnShk -> Thrash, 1-2 targets
FL(3) -> EnShk -> Lacerate, 3-4 targets
Lacerate, 5+ targets

with the additional caveats mentioned above. Technically Assassinate should come before Discharge (cooldown, not refresh, and not above Wither) on 3-4 targets, but the difference would be negligible since Discharge has an 18 second duration and a 15 second cooldown.

Open questions:

1) Is the +15% threat on Shock from Electrify correct? It's easily seen what that would change within the current settings, as the only other ability with a threat modifier is Wither, and this is never used in combination with Shock (simply use DpGCD figures for everything else).
2) What are the durations on Energize and Harnessed Darkness, and what is the likelihood of "missing" such an opportunity due to lack of Force or time? Here the Main Combo is least priority, and it is presumed that you would stop and do more important things (like Debuffs) when needed, then go back from where you left off. In effect, Main Combo is just what you do in your spare time. Is this realistic? We can, of course, pool Force for quicker bursts if needed.
3) To what extent do the above rules change with different (but realistic) gear values? For instance, we can see that Crit and Surge will affect Shock and EnShk disproportionately; will this change any priorities?