Tedahmeister's Guide to Tanking (3 of 4)

[tedahmeister5]

Hamstermeister (Sensai) say.... Dodge - The ability to avoid taking damage altogether is a skill (MOD) that is needed by any high level tank. Let's look at what goes into Dodge... let's cover AGILITY - The goal is to max this stat out... especially Herioc Agility. The higher this value, coupled with Herioc, Dexterity, Ambidex, etc significanly increases your chance of getting hit.

And as we covered on the last part of (2 of 4) the ADI (when calculated with the miss of the hit)... provides a welcome boost to Damage mitigation, specifically reducing the extreme values that occur within the DI*N computation. Let's look at the math

You attack MOB X.

It hits you for a round

I will use basic math for the formula.

DB=400, N=20, Damage Interval (DI)=100

So let's plug it in:

But first lets look at the full damage spread

DB 400
DI-1 500
DI-2 600
DI-3 700
DI-4 800
DI-5 900
DI-6 1000
DI-7 1100
DI-8 1200
DI-9 1300
DI-10 1400
DI-11 1500
DI-12 1600
DI-13 1700
DI-14 1800
DI-15 1900
DI-16 2000
DI-17 2100
DI-18 2200
DI-19 2300
DI-20 2400

If you have LOW AC you get a "WIDER" distribution of damage anywhere from 500(DB+DI-1) to 2400 (DI-20).

So over 6 rounds you could get the following with LOW AC (This weights to high values in the DI range do to the extra check to the AC in the HIT (H) formula)

1600,2200,2400,1100 You can look it up on the table.... which totals... 7300 or an average of 1825 per hit which is in the DI-14---DI-15 range.

Now lets throw a dodge in there on the next round:

2100,1300, Dodge,1600 - 5000 damage in that round... 1250 average hit which fits nicely in the DI-8-9 range. Very tankable (at least for that round).

So to recap, the higher you increase your dodge mod, Parry, Avoidance, Lessen Riposte, etc the less damage you take on a series of hits... thus increasing your Damage Mitigation (lessen the amount of damage that you take). --- NOTE: This is where exponential smoothing occurs...if you track the population distribution of damage (parse it) over a long period of time you will see a correlation between the amount of AC you have and where you "FIT" into the DI banding.

This is a nice transition point to cover Shielding. There are AAXP that you need to max to fully benefit from using a shield. What you need to know is that there is an EXTRA check against the AC that is on the SHIELD

SHIELDING .

At this point I need to introduce a new formula that explains how shielding works and interacts with the amount of damage that you take when tanking with a shield:

Shielding does not have a singular universal value. Some mobs have more of their damage coming from DB and some have more coming from DI. On a mob with DB 1 and DI 400 (which doesn't seem to exist; this is only illustrative) shielding will do absolutely nothing. On a mob with DB 1,000 and DI 10, shielding is invaluable. In general, your meanest mobs have more damage coming from DB, because this results in the minimum hit being higher. This means that in the roughest situations--such as tanking boss mobs--shielding is going to do the most good.

Here is the formula:

H = DB *(1.00-S) + (N*DI)

S represents the amount of shielding you have, up to a maximum/cap of 35% shielding. This is where a lot of confusion comes in, because people have an improper understanding of the value of shielding.

As the equation shows, shielding only modifies the DB portion of damage. It shaves off a fixed % of the bonus damage before it gets added to the DI result.

So you get hit for say 1000 well DI-1 is 1100 ... (100 being the DI counter value). If you have max shielding you take 1000- (35 percent of that amount) or 350... so you are taking 650 damage... THEN the DI range gets added to your value do if you had no shielding with a DI-10 hit (2000) you would take DB-1000 + the DI-10 of 1000 which gives you 2000 damage for that hit... with shielding you take 650 + 1000 which is 1650...

Removing shielding for a second for clarity, there are thus 20 discrete values for damage that may result, ranging from: (there is the adding benefit that you get 5% damage mit out of the gate which also lowers the DB computation formula.

Minimum Damage = DB + 1*DI
Maximum Damage = DB + 20*DI

N, which is the random 1-20 number, is affected by your AC and class mitigation.
You can determine all of these numbers simply by watching your logs and damage intake. Let the mob hit you, and collect data, and you can find a range of hits, and extrapolate from there using the formula above.

Let's go sideways a second and talk about Evasive... using this disc increases your dodge modifcation and allows you to miss more. So, depending on the mob you are fighting (raid target) you need to watch for the values of what you are getting hit by and see if the ADI (average DI) provides you with a safe fluctuation of damage so that healers can adjust and keep you alive with the heal chain.

In 4 of 4 I will show an example of the DB, DI, hits that Gwarf/Jans, etc and other are taking on the Lord Bretcht fight ... right now i have 1000 and 15620 (Per my hit's as Tedahmeister which is detailed in 4 of 4) as the DI-1 and D1-20 respectively from him... thats a wide variance. But using what we already know you are starting to get an idea of why Jans and Gwarf live so long... they reduce the number of high DI values during each round -- Greatly increasing their ability to stay alive during the fight.

Best regards,