Obtainable Optimum Tank Stats

[Cosmic Osmo]

(02-15-2012 01:32 AM)Neokarasu Wrote:  The best we can do is theorycraft the best possible itemization and then try to get as close to it as possible via Enhancements switching. However, that best possible isn't necessarily attainable or practical.

No, that is absolutely not the best you can do. That is a waste of time and a useless way of thinking about things.

The best you can do is to look at the available itemization and determine the optimal choices from that set.

1. Enhancements let you choose between absorption + accuracy (a terrible threat stat), or defense + shield. The latter will always give you much more total avoidance, and also less spiky avoidance due to decreasing the fraction of incoming hits that pass unmitigated.

2. Modifications let you choose between a little defense and a little absorption. Because we picked up so much shield in step 1, the absorption is generally going to win here.

3. The only real choice to make is between rakata ears and implants (more threat + HP) or veracity mastercrafts (more avoidance). Here, mastercraft generally comes out ahead, simply due to the avoidance increase being so high that they provide not only a lot more mitigation, but slightly better EHP (except against attacks that bypass avoidance).

4. A similar tradeoff exists for some classes in the bracer and belt slots, between rakata and orange slotted pieces. The additional wrinkle here is that there's armor value involved. Still, it is easy to calculate the higher mitigation piece, which is usually rakata, and definitely rakata if you have crit-crafted ones.

5. Every tank owes it to themselves and their raid to possess an absolute-highest-mitigation-possible set of gear. In building this set of gear, it's advantageous to ignore threat entirely. When you really need to sacrifice some tankiness for threat, do it by swapping some pieces to max DPS gear (which you also owe it to yourself to possess), in whichever slots give you the best tradeoff (most threat gained per unit tankiness lost).