Damage Mitigation: Explanation UPDATED 21/03/2021

jasonteck

how have you verified the formulas are correct? Did admin at ESO confirm?

paulsimonps

jasonteck wrote: »

how have you verified the formulas are correct? Did admin at ESO confirm?

They aren't allowed to even if they wanted to. And I don't need them to verify this. Everyone can go and double check it. Its not really that difficult. Find the base value of an attack by getting hit by it with no mitigation what so ever and then try out what damage you take with the different combinations of mitigation and the math will add up. If you doubt me then test it, if you find something else then show me and teach me.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

paulsimonps wrote: »

jasonteck wrote: »

how have you verified the formulas are correct? Did admin at ESO confirm?

They aren't allowed to even if they wanted to. And I don't need them to verify this. Everyone can go and double check it. Its not really that difficult. Find the base value of an attack by getting hit by it with no mitigation what so ever and then try out what damage you take with the different combinations of mitigation and the math will add up. If you doubt me then test it, if you find something else then show me and teach me.

This is science 101, I wish schools taught that particular skill better.

paulsimonps

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

paulsimonps wrote: »

jasonteck wrote: »

how have you verified the formulas are correct? Did admin at ESO confirm?

They aren't allowed to even if they wanted to. And I don't need them to verify this. Everyone can go and double check it. Its not really that difficult. Find the base value of an attack by getting hit by it with no mitigation what so ever and then try out what damage you take with the different combinations of mitigation and the math will add up. If you doubt me then test it, if you find something else then show me and teach me.

This is science 101, I wish schools taught that particular skill better.

Yeap, all my testing is based on the same idea of a clean testing environment where there are as few changing variables as possible and as few unknowns as possible so that the testing is as consistent as possible.

paulsimonps

Thank you guys for 10k views on this, I know flame threads gets much more views but I am really proud of this thread and it means a lot to see people actually use it and learn from it. Actually get a few people in game that run past me and thank me for the thread and that means a lot. And now I'm sounding like a youtuber Anyway thanks fellow theorycrafters!

Agalloch

paulsimonps wrote: »

Hello everyone, Luna here, decided to finally make a big update for this thread and to rewrite a lot of my explanations to make them more comprehensible as well as update some of the information in it and add somethings that I have now done more testing on. So here we go again, ESO Damage Mitigation Explained!

CALCULATIONS:

First off I would like to start of with saying that there are 2 main ways that mitigation can work, that is does it apply the mitigation BEFORE, or AFTER any possible damage shield gets damaged. So what I mean by that is if you have multiple sources of mitigation and at the same time have an active damage shield then some of the mitigation will be applied before the shield takes damage and some will mitigate the damage that overflows from the shield if it gets depleted. This is really important cause it heavily changes the strengths of the different sources. However don't confuse this fact with if damage shields have mitigation or not, they don't.

Now lets talk numbers. The way that mitigation is calculated is as following:

MITIGATION=100-(100*(1-((Resistance/662)/100))*(1-(Mitigation #1)/100)*(1-(Mitigation #2)/100)*(1-(Mitigation #3)/100))*etc etc)

DAMAGE TAKEN=Base Damage*(1-((Resistance/662)/100))*(1-(Mitigation #1)/100)*(1-(Mitigation #2)/100)*(1-(Mitigation #3)/100))*etc etc

The way you would use this formula is to replace the place holders with the percentage numbers that is show in the tool-tips in the game and obviously the resistance should be the number of which ever resistance you want to test with. If you have more than 3 sources than just add more to fill your needs. Now something you might notice is that this way of calculating will result in diminishing returns, what that means is that for each added mitigation source the usefulness of each individual source gets reduced. As an example, having 2 sources that give 50% mitigation will give you a total of 75% mitigation.

Lets do some examples using things the average tank would use. Lets make it a Dragonknight, for obvious reasons. So they would have 50% from blocking, lets say 30% from resistance, 15% from minor maim, 8% from Absorb Magic, 10% from the Iron Skin Passive and 20% from the Sword and Board Passive. The calculations would look like this:

100-(100*(1-(19860/662)/100)*(1-(50)/100)*(1-(15)/100)*(1-(8)/100))*(1-(10)/100)*(1-(20)/100))=100-(100*(0.70)*(0.5)*(0.85)*(0.92)*(0.9)*(0.8))=80.2936%

So with all of those sources added together we ended up with a total of 80.2936% of the damage we take being mitigated. Now if we want to apply these calculations to see how much damage we would be taking from a hit we would just change it to be like this:

23549*(1-(19860/662)/100)*(1-(50)/100)*(1-(15)/100)*(1-(8)/100))*(1-(10)/100)*(1-(20)/100)=23549*(0.70)*(0.5)*(0.85)*(0.92)*(0.9)*(0.8)=4640

So the example number I used there was picked by randomly smashing my keyboard, but as you can see it doesn't take a lot to reduce very high damage numbers to something very manageable. Now I want to show you guys how this type of calculations would work if a damage shield was involved, cause as I previously explained somethings are mitigated before the damage shield takes damage and some things gets mitigated after it takes damage, I will be putting a list of all of this down below but for now if we use our previous example as our base but then add in a damage shield with the strength of 5000 it would look like this:

(23549*(1-(15)/100)-5000)*(1-(8)/100))*(1-(10)/100)*(1-(20)/100)*(1-(19860/662)/100)*(1-(50)/100)=(23549*(0.85)-5000)*(0.92)*(0.9)*(0.8)*(0.70)*(0.5)=3481

In this case minor maim was the only thing that was mitigating damage before the damage shield was put into play. The rule of thumb is that anything that says ”Increases amount of damage you can block” will together with base blocking and resistance be AFTER the damage shield. Now there is only one more thing we need to look at when it comes to calculating but before we do that we need to talk about:

VULNERABILITIES:

Right now there are not that many ways for us to take increased damage to attacks but since minor vulnerability is something even mobs can apply now I wanted to make a specific section addressing Vulnerabilities of all kinds. The most known and talked about is the vampire fire vulnerability and the werewolf's poison vulnerability. I will be adding these as its own list under the mitigation options at the bottom of the thread. But now to the math, difference here is that the extra damage taken is additive and not multiplicative/exponential.

VULNERABILITY=Vulnerability #1+Vulnerability #2+Vulnerability #3+etc etc

DAMAGE TAKEN=Base Damage*(1+(Vulnerability #1+Vulnerability #2+Vulnerability #3+etc etc)/100)

One thing to remember here if you want to play around with damage shields in your calculation is that Vulnerabilities always comes first. But moving on. We have talked about calculating mitigation and to calculate mitigation in combination with vulnerabilities and damage shields, now I want to delve a bit deeper into something we have already been seen used but not really had explained yet.

RESISTANCE:

So there are two main types of resistance which are Spell and Physical, but each of them also have sub categories. Spell resistance has Flame, Frost and Shock resistance and Physical has Poison and Disease resistance. Now one important thing to know about resistance is that there is a Hard Cap, that means that after you reach a certain point it won't give you anything extra. For Champion point 160+ characters the hard cap for resistance is 33,100, or 662 resistance per 1% mitigated, which then tops it of at 50%. You can have more resistance than what the hard cap allows but it won't give you more mitigation, however, in PvP if someone debuffs you then having resistance above the hard cap can sometimes allow you to stay at hard cap if the debuff is to weak or your buffed resistance is strong enough.

Another thing we need to address now is how those sub categories work with the main resistance types. Sub categories adds to their main type whenever the attack element is of the same element. As an example, if I have 15000 spell resistance and 5000 flame resistance then if I get attack with a fire spell then I will have 20000 spell resistance against that attack. One thing to note here is that if your Spell or Physical resistance is already at hard cap then your sub categories will not add anything, since they are just temporary increases to the main type if attacked by the right element. But again if you get debuffed then anything above hard cap will help you stay up. Last thing to note about the sub categories is that since they are in its base form just adding to their main type then if someone penetrates your Spell or Physical resistance then they will penetrate your sub categories too. But now on to the next part of this thread and last form of resistance.

CRITICAL RESISTANCE:

Now critical resistance works very differently from the other forms of resistance. What it does is it lowers the enemy players critical hit damage modifier. A characters base modifier is 1.5 which means that if you land a critical hit then you deal 50% more damage. There are ways to improve this, such as minor and major force or the Champion point system. What we are gonna be looking at of course is how we can reduce that modifier. This one is very special cause unlike mitigation that is a multiplicative reduction this one is actually a subtractive one. This is the formula:

CRITICAL MODIFIER=1.5+(Critical Damage Buff #1/100)+(Critical Damage Buff #2/100)+(etc etc)-(Critical Resistance/68/100)

DAMAGE TAKEN=Base Damage*(1.5+(Critical Damage Buff #1/100)+(Critical Damage Buff #2/100)+(etc etc)-(Critical Resistance/68/100))

If a player has base critical modifier and they hit an enemy player that has 100 points into Resistant then their modifier will be affected like this:

1.5-(1699/68/100)=1.5-0.2498529=1.5-0.25=1.25

Finding out what the % per resistance was was not easy but from my testing I have found that it is 68(if someone else has a different number I would love to see it.). This means that 100 points into Resistant gives you ~25% critical hit resistance. The total amount of critical hit resistance possible is 5067 or 74.5%. I now want to make something perfectly clear, THERE IS NO CRITICAL RESISTANCE HARD CAP! Ok? Ok! There isn't even enough critical resistance available to justify having it. Max resistance is 74.5% and highest possible critical damage modifier is over 100%.

We have now gone through everything you need to know to calculate mitigation on any character you want or any situation you want. But before we get to the list of all the different sources there is one special ability I want to address cause the rules that it uses are not very straight forward, that ability is...

GUARD:

Now guard is an Alliance War Support ability. What it does is that you apply it to a friendly target and a beam will appear between you, any damage that the targeted ally takes will be mitigated by 30% but the damage will instead be taken by the caster. Now the damage that the caster takes can be mitigated as well, but not only from the casters mitigation but from the targeted allies mitigation as well, in layman's terms it double dips. It will however not use the casters blocking mitigation or anything that ”Increases amount of damage you can block”. This means that the actual damage that the caster takes is in most circumstances extremely low. One thing to note as well is that no matter what type of damage the targeted ally is taking the damage taken by the caster will always be physical damage.

Now on to the most confusing part of guard, what happens when the targeted ally uses a damage shield. What it does is that it will be reducing the damage taken by the caster by ~57.1% of the allies damage shields strength. So if the targeted ally takes 10,000 damage but uses a 5,000 damage shield the caster will take 855 damage (=10,000*0.3-(5,000x0.429)). There is no clear reason behind this and in my opinion it doesn't make any sense what so ever but that is how it works. It would make sense if it instead had the caster take 30% of the damage that the ally takes after the damage shield is depleted but that is not the case.

Well that ladies and gentlemen concludes this explanation on how damage mitigation works, below you will find a list of all possible ways to increase your mitigation and the possible way that vulnerabilities can be applied to you. Note thou that if I have missed a source then please don't hesitate to tell me in the comments below so that we can all help each other gain more knowledge about the game.

MITIGATION BEFORE DAMAGE SHIELD:

• 30% Major Maim (All)
  • Dawns Wrath Ultimate: Nova
• 15% Minor Maim (All)
  • One Hand and Shield Ability: Low Slash
  • Draconic Power Ability: Choking Talons
  • Shadow Ability: Summon Shade
  • Shadow Ability: Mass Hysteria
  • Alchemy Poison Effect: Maiming
  • Alchemy Poison Effect: Brutality-Draining
  • Armor Set: Knightmare
  • Secondary Elemental Effect: Chilled
• 30% Major Protection (All)
  • Shadow Ultimate: Consuming Darkness (Bolstering Darkness Morph makes it 60% for Caster)
  • Armor Set: Pirate Skeleton
• 8% Minor Protection (All)
  • Restoring Light Ability: Restoring Focus
  • Fighters Guild Ability: Circle of Protection
  • Shadow Ability: Dark Cloak
  • Alchemy Potion Effect: Protection
  • Armor Set: Vampire Cloak
• 5% Minor Aegis (Boss Dmg)
  • Armor Set: Lunar Bastion
  • Armor Set: Eternal Yokeda
  • Armor Set: Twilight Remedy
• 6% Nord Passive: Rugged (All)
• 0-33% Vampire Passive: Undeath (All) (Increases incrementally by 1% per ~1.5% hp lost below 50% hp)
• 75% Vampire Ability: Mist Form (All)
• 0-25% CP Passive: Hardy (Physical, Poison, Disease)
• 0-24% CP Passive: Thick Skin (DoT's)
• 0-25% CP Passive: Elemental Defender (Magicka, Shock, Fire, Ice)
• 0-25% CP Passive: Expert Defender (Light, Heavy attacks)
• 20% Dual Wield Ability: Blade Cloak (AoE)
• 20% Ardent Flame Ultimate: Standard of Might (All)
• 15% (+4% per target) Aedric Spear Ultimate: Empowering Sweep (All)
• 5%/20% Armor Set: Bastion of the Heartland (Player Dmg/Siege Dmg & Player AoE Spells)
• 5% Armor Set: Shield of the Valiant (Player Dmg)
• 5% Armor Set: Buffer of the Swift (Player Dmg)
• 25% Armor Set: Leki's Focus (Player AoE)
• 15% Armor Set: Light of Cyrodiil (All while Casting or Channeling Spell)
• 35% Armor Set: Reactive Armor (All while CC'ed)
• 50% PvP Effects: Battle Spirit (All)
• 30% Support Ability: Guard (All)

MITIGATION AFTER DAMAGE SHIELD:

• 50% Blocking (All)
• 0-50% Physical Resistance (Physical, Poison, Disease)
• 0-50% Spell Resistance (Magicka, Shock, Fire, Ice)
• 20% One Hand and Shield Passive: Sword and Board (All)
• 15% One Hand and Shield Passive: Deflect Bolt (Projectile and Ranged Dmg)
• 8% One Hand and Shield Ability: Defensive Posture (All)
• 10% Draconic Power Passive: Iron Skin (All)
• 15% Aedric Spear Passive: Spear Wall (Melee Dmg)
• 8% Armor Set: Footman's Fortune (All)
• 8% Armor Set: Ward of Cyrodiil (All)

VULNERABILITY:

• 8% Minor Vulnerability (All)
• 15-20-25% Vampire Stages (Fire)
• 25% Werewolf form (Poison)
• 10% Armor Set: The Morag Tong (Poison)
• 10% Ardent Flame Ability: Engulfing Flame (Fire)
• 10% Armor Set: Way of Martial Knowledge (Next attack after proc)

Awesome! You and @Asayre make us understand more of the ESO's mechanics.

Thanks a lot for posting this!

Torbschka

Awesome thread!

Though I have a question about the 6% Nord passive:

So is the 6% mitigation worth 3972 Motivation? (6*662?)

I hear all the time its useless, but how exactly , has it to do with how this passive works with other ?

I mean, if the 6% would be changed in:

"Increases ur armor and spell resis by 3972", it wouldnt be to bad, would it?

Stannum

Missing frost staff ancient knowlege passive 20% block mitigation

paulsimonps

Stannum wrote: »

Missing frost staff ancient knowlege passive 20% block mitigation

Thank you for the helping me find stuff I missed. I added it to the list and added in the parenthesis after that it is specifically when blocking with an Frost Staff. Also added to those that needed it that the (All) damage only applied while blocking to those that were specifically BLOCK mitigation and not overall mitigation.

Autolycus

Thanks for keeping this updated for all of us to use. It makes a huge difference having a resource like this available, not just for people who want to learn the ropes and begin getting involved in tanking, but also for those of us who have been tanking for a few years. This thread serves as a base point of reference for a lot of people. I'm happy that you are getting all of these views and constructive feedback.

Keep up the good work! Here's a bump for your efforts

Nolic1

Great post love the math behind it to but you might want to look into game development a little. Most mmo's use resistance as a form of damaged blocked upfront and damage reduction as a forum that follows after so if you have a 32k spell resistance you have a 49% damage blocked and if you have say 20% damage reduction the 49% comes off first then the 20% comes off of what is left over.

So it would be like this.

5000 dmg hit -(49%)=2,450 then -(20%)=490 total damage you would take from a hit like that.

But thats if they use that formula which most mmo devs do use and I know the hero engine this game is built on has it built in that way so am wondering if you figured that type of formula or just did it based on total damage mitigation?

Also they did take out the resistance cap so you can go above 32k and you do not see diminished returns till 46K or about there I have tested that with the new two handed ultimate beserker's strike and not seen it reduced below that.

But I do have to say this is a some really good work on the math side of things and your formula is sound on the resistances.

WalksonGraves

Leki is all aoe now not just player

paulsimonps

Nolic1 wrote: »

Great post love the math behind it to but you might want to look into game development a little. Most mmo's use resistance as a form of damaged blocked upfront and damage reduction as a forum that follows after so if you have a 32k spell resistance you have a 49% damage blocked and if you have say 20% damage reduction the 49% comes off first then the 20% comes off of what is left over.

So it would be like this.

5000 dmg hit -(49%)=2,450 then -(20%)=490 total damage you would take from a hit like that.

But thats if they use that formula which most mmo devs do use and I know the hero engine this game is built on has it built in that way so am wondering if you figured that type of formula or just did it based on total damage mitigation?

Also they did take out the resistance cap so you can go above 32k and you do not see diminished returns till 46K or about there I have tested that with the new two handed ultimate beserker's strike and not seen it reduced below that.

But I do have to say this is a some really good work on the math side of things and your formula is sound on the resistances.

The math you showed makes no sense to me. And either way that is not how its worked. My math is tested and true. I have check almost every combination of mitigation to test how it all works out. To compare the theory with the actual results. It adds up.

My first ever thread I did about damage mitigation, its from June 2015, shows how I first started to notice how things were done. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/187110/dmg-mitigation-for-tanks#latest

Please don't necro it or anything but if you want to see how I started my early testing phases that will give you a bit of insight. You check for the base damage and then you do a few different combinations of mitigation and see what you get as actual damage and you can reverse engineer the math through that. Its the same way I figured out the Damage shield parts.

Also there is a Hard cap. Its just that you can still gain resistance past that and then if you get debuffed you could still remain above the cap if you had enough. If you however can show proof of the opposite I am sure All tanks in the game would love to see it.

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Leki is all aoe now not just player

Updated. And also updated Minor Aegis to say Dungeons and Trials Dmg cause I must have missed to update that when it was changed.

Nolic1

paulsimonps wrote: »

Nolic1 wrote: »

Great post love the math behind it to but you might want to look into game development a little. Most mmo's use resistance as a form of damaged blocked upfront and damage reduction as a forum that follows after so if you have a 32k spell resistance you have a 49% damage blocked and if you have say 20% damage reduction the 49% comes off first then the 20% comes off of what is left over.

So it would be like this.

5000 dmg hit -(49%)=2,450 then -(20%)=490 total damage you would take from a hit like that.

But thats if they use that formula which most mmo devs do use and I know the hero engine this game is built on has it built in that way so am wondering if you figured that type of formula or just did it based on total damage mitigation?

Also they did take out the resistance cap so you can go above 32k and you do not see diminished returns till 46K or about there I have tested that with the new two handed ultimate beserker's strike and not seen it reduced below that.

But I do have to say this is a some really good work on the math side of things and your formula is sound on the resistances.

The math you showed makes no sense to me. And either way that is not how its worked. My math is tested and true. I have check almost every combination of mitigation to test how it all works out. To compare the theory with the actual results. It adds up.

My first ever thread I did about damage mitigation, its from June 2015, shows how I first started to notice how things were done. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/187110/dmg-mitigation-for-tanks#latest

Please don't necro it or anything but if you want to see how I started my early testing phases that will give you a bit of insight. You check for the base damage and then you do a few different combinations of mitigation and see what you get as actual damage and you can reverse engineer the math through that. Its the same way I figured out the Damage shield parts.

Also there is a Hard cap. Its just that you can still gain resistance past that and then if you get debuffed you could still remain above the cap if you had enough. If you however can show proof of the opposite I am sure All tanks in the game would love to see it.

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Leki is all aoe now not just player

Updated. And also updated Minor Aegis to say Dungeons and Trials Dmg cause I must have missed to update that when it was changed.

Hey thanks for the reply. Also again thanks for the math on this.

paulsimonps

Added another mitigation effect to the "Before Damage Shield" section:

"50% Mages Guild Ability: Radiant Magelight (Attacks from Stealth)"

Bazeric

Hmmm, interesting... though I just put together a super duper mitigation build, and it isn't preforming the way I think it should, wish I knew about this thread before I converted. Now to double check it against what I'm trying to achieve. Something doesn't seem to be stacking the way I thought it should. Glad you bum... updated it.

WalksonGraves

Bazeric wrote: »

Hmmm, interesting... though I just put together a super duper mitigation build, and it isn't preforming the way I think it should, wish I knew about this thread before I converted. Now to double check it against what I'm trying to achieve. Something doesn't seem to be stacking the way I thought it should. Glad you bum... updated it.

What sets are you using?

Bazeric

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Bazeric wrote: »

Hmmm, interesting... though I just put together a super duper mitigation build, and it isn't preforming the way I think it should, wish I knew about this thread before I converted. Now to double check it against what I'm trying to achieve. Something doesn't seem to be stacking the way I thought it should. Glad you bum... updated it.

What sets are you using?

I am trying Pirates and Vampires Cloak stacked with fear maim, vampire, blocking/shield ult (still leveling ult, maybe spell shield will be the difference), and NB passives. Also I am just playing around to see how trolly I can be in PVP, so not PVE. There have been two main things I've noticed after a couple nights:

1. Sometimes things seem fine and I am hardly getting scratched, other times a couple people blow through me in seconds. (but I seem to have HoT issues too, not sure if it's pirates or not, still new to this build I know it debuffs, but some just seem missing)
2. My combat log has differing damage numbers from my death recap.


It isn't feeling any more effective than a cancer tank I tried a couple months ago. Also RIP Strife cost for tanks... I am using some sturdy pieces this time and more CP in block cost reduction but don't see a gain in time blocking... maybe I should stop rushing megazergs.... I just want to be cool like the DK Tanks that tank zergs (RIP melee magblade).

WalksonGraves

Bazeric wrote: »

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Bazeric wrote: »

Hmmm, interesting... though I just put together a super duper mitigation build, and it isn't preforming the way I think it should, wish I knew about this thread before I converted. Now to double check it against what I'm trying to achieve. Something doesn't seem to be stacking the way I thought it should. Glad you bum... updated it.

What sets are you using?

I am trying Pirates and Vampires Cloak stacked with fear maim, vampire, blocking/shield ult (still leveling ult, maybe spell shield will be the difference), and NB passives. Also I am just playing around to see how trolly I can be in PVP, so not PVE. There have been two main things I've noticed after a couple nights:

1. Sometimes things seem fine and I am hardly getting scratched, other times a couple people blow through me in seconds. (but I seem to have HoT issues too, not sure if it's pirates or not, still new to this build I know it debuffs, but some just seem missing)
2. My combat log has differing damage numbers from my death recap.


It isn't feeling any more effective than a cancer tank I tried a couple months ago. Also RIP Strife cost for tanks... I am using some sturdy pieces this time and more CP in block cost reduction but don't see a gain in time blocking... maybe I should stop rushing megazergs.... I just want to be cool like the DK Tanks that tank zergs (RIP melee magblade).

I run leki/reactive/pirate it's pretty beefy(25%/35%/30%). Problem with dr is its multiplicative so small boosts like vampire cloak get lost in the reduction. Even with that much mitigation I can just maintain 1v1 against a good player. It shines in pve where the healing isn't halved, I can self heal with drain faster than I lose hp in most situations.
I think if you want to run into zergs you want a shieldplar, damage mitigation is good for pve but unless you get really lucky with reflect you can't kill anything.

Bazeric

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Bazeric wrote: »

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Bazeric wrote: »

Hmmm, interesting... though I just put together a super duper mitigation build, and it isn't preforming the way I think it should, wish I knew about this thread before I converted. Now to double check it against what I'm trying to achieve. Something doesn't seem to be stacking the way I thought it should. Glad you bum... updated it.

What sets are you using?

I am trying Pirates and Vampires Cloak stacked with fear maim, vampire, blocking/shield ult (still leveling ult, maybe spell shield will be the difference), and NB passives. Also I am just playing around to see how trolly I can be in PVP, so not PVE. There have been two main things I've noticed after a couple nights:

1. Sometimes things seem fine and I am hardly getting scratched, other times a couple people blow through me in seconds. (but I seem to have HoT issues too, not sure if it's pirates or not, still new to this build I know it debuffs, but some just seem missing)
2. My combat log has differing damage numbers from my death recap.


It isn't feeling any more effective than a cancer tank I tried a couple months ago. Also RIP Strife cost for tanks... I am using some sturdy pieces this time and more CP in block cost reduction but don't see a gain in time blocking... maybe I should stop rushing megazergs.... I just want to be cool like the DK Tanks that tank zergs (RIP melee magblade).

I run leki/reactive/pirate it's pretty beefy(25%/35%/30%). Problem with dr is its multiplicative so small boosts like vampire cloak get lost in the reduction. Even with that much mitigation I can just maintain 1v1 against a good player. It shines in pve where the healing isn't halved, I can self heal with drain faster than I lose hp in most situations.
I think if you want to run into zergs you want a shieldplar, damage mitigation is good for pve but unless you get really lucky with reflect you can't kill anything.

Well it was nice to see this thread even if it is after the fact, helped clear things up for me, thanks. I'm am not going for kills, just straight pain in the azz tank. My old sap tank got nerfed after the last balances, so I am just trying to be creative. Still don't see how the DK tanks take ~1k-2k damage from my 40K+(tooltip) assassins wills when I was damage, but maybe I am just confused by the discrepancy between my combat log and death recap. Also I don't know why my combat log and death recaps have differing numbers, anyone have ideas or a helpful thread for that ?

kylewwefan

Great post! I still can't barely understand it, but I'm trying to figure out some things.

My night blade tank as Stam does not do so well against hard hitting trial bosses. Even when hardcapped had issues my DK did not seem to suffer from. It's just much more difficult to achieve the subpar performance

When I switched him to saptank even in 5 light armor, resistance fell to maybe 27k buffed, and I'm amazed it performs really good in dungeons. Most odd is how well he does with huge mobs.....not even blocking, just spamming sap and keeping up armor buff.

I guess my question is what kind of mitigation are you getting when NOT blocking? Like, are there some kind of thresh holds you cross in resistance that greatly reduce amount of damage incoming? In that line of thinking, is there a sweet spot in resistance that provides enough to actually perform as a tank? Like do you have a recommendation?

I still have to block the big heavy hits you see coming miles away, but I find you really don't have to permablock that much in vet Content and even being way below caps still actually works well.

WalksonGraves

kylewwefan wrote: »

Great post! I still can't barely understand it, but I'm trying to figure out some things.

My night blade tank as Stam does not do so well against hard hitting trial bosses. Even when hardcapped had issues my DK did not seem to suffer from. It's just much more difficult to achieve the subpar performance

When I switched him to saptank even in 5 light armor, resistance fell to maybe 27k buffed, and I'm amazed it performs really good in dungeons. Most odd is how well he does with huge mobs.....not even blocking, just spamming sap and keeping up armor buff.

I guess my question is what kind of mitigation are you getting when NOT blocking? Like, are there some kind of thresh holds you cross in resistance that greatly reduce amount of damage incoming? In that line of thinking, is there a sweet spot in resistance that provides enough to actually perform as a tank? Like do you have a recommendation?

I still have to block the big heavy hits you see coming miles away, but I find you really don't have to permablock that much in vet Content and even being way below caps still actually works well.

It's because sap tanks are hybrid dps and rely on magika to sustain hp. Your mag regen and crit is much higher in light and thus you perform better than with heavy passives.

My nb tank stacks dr and it's the difference between blocking a boss and taking 10k damage vs as little as 2k with multiple large reductions. I only block boss heavy attacks.

paulsimonps

kylewwefan wrote: »

Great post! I still can't barely understand it, but I'm trying to figure out some things.

My night blade tank as Stam does not do so well against hard hitting trial bosses. Even when hardcapped had issues my DK did not seem to suffer from. It's just much more difficult to achieve the subpar performance

When I switched him to saptank even in 5 light armor, resistance fell to maybe 27k buffed, and I'm amazed it performs really good in dungeons. Most odd is how well he does with huge mobs.....not even blocking, just spamming sap and keeping up armor buff.

I guess my question is what kind of mitigation are you getting when NOT blocking? Like, are there some kind of thresh holds you cross in resistance that greatly reduce amount of damage incoming? In that line of thinking, is there a sweet spot in resistance that provides enough to actually perform as a tank? Like do you have a recommendation?

I still have to block the big heavy hits you see coming miles away, but I find you really don't have to permablock that much in vet Content and even being way below caps still actually works well.

@kylewwefan

To survive against a veteran trial boss and even some normal trial bosses you need around 80%+ of total damage mitigation. Use my list of mitigations and the formula provided in the OP and you can pick and mix however you want. Technically you can make some extremely niche builds that can get that high without block but I don't think you will be able to do it on a Nightblade. I've theorized it on a Templar Nord Vampire, but that's about it, and I haven't gotten the right gear yet to try it in practice. Find a way to keep your block up a lot in Veteran trials or you won't make it, that is one of the reason DK's are Meta Tanks, cause they have an easy way of doing that. If you want more help you need to provide more info about the build.

kylewwefan

Thanks! On light armor saptank I use leeching plate/ Baharas Curse/ Monster. It's a Gilliam pseudo build.....I think he uses all heavy, but I found "curse" pieces easier to acquire in light. So I kind of went with it for testing and it has been working well. I'm using all leeching jewelry and leeching S/B.

I read that the 40% less trap damage applies to ground AOE which might be a contributing factor to how well I can tank in 5 LA. Also, I'm vampire so the undeath passives surely help a bit.

I was greatly mistaken with my resistance numbers..it's more like 21k physical, 23k spell resist with Swarm Mother, but I wear lord warden quite a bit and that puts me closer to 27k spell....I know I couldn't Tank a vet trial with that. LOL! But dungeons is ok to pretty good.


On Vet Trials, I tried Ebon/ Alkosh and it did not work so good. Think I switched to footman/ armormaster / lord warden and barely made it through. Resistance is way way over cap with that setup, like 40k.

I used all shield play enchants on jewelry ....I may have 1 on my DK tank and contemplating changing that to mag recovery.

WalksonGraves

kylewwefan wrote: »

Thanks! On light armor saptank I use leeching plate/ Baharas Curse/ Monster. It's a Gilliam pseudo build.....I think he uses all heavy, but I found "curse" pieces easier to acquire in light. So I kind of went with it for testing and it has been working well. I'm using all leeching jewelry and leeching S/B.

I read that the 40% less trap damage applies to ground AOE which might be a contributing factor to how well I can tank in 5 LA. Also, I'm vampire so the undeath passives surely help a bit.

I was greatly mistaken with my resistance numbers..it's more like 21k physical, 23k spell resist with Swarm Mother, but I wear lord warden quite a bit and that puts me closer to 27k spell....I know I couldn't Tank a vet trial with that. LOL! But dungeons is ok to pretty good.


On Vet Trials, I tried Ebon/ Alkosh and it did not work so good. Think I switched to footman/ armormaster / lord warden and barely made it through. Resistance is way way over cap with that setup, like 40k.

I used all shield play enchants on jewelry ....I may have 1 on my DK tank and contemplating changing that to mag recovery.

The cap is 33 k so that 40k is pointless.
If you are too squishy in 23k get someone to cast guard on you or get sets that improve your dr and not just add passive low hp heals.

You can tank vet trials as a nb but not as a sap tank, it functions too much like a dps build to hang. Stick to vet dungeons or respec.

Only put on swarm mother when you have a ton of ranged adds otherwise pirate skeleton is bis for tanking.

Stick with 3x shieldplay blocking is the core of your build.

kylewwefan

I might have to try the pirate skeleton. My funnel health will likely offset the minor defile to nothing. I liked the chudan, but it's same buff from shadow barrier so won't stack. Lord warden is a great buff but it's stationary and that can be not so useful at times.

paulsimonps

kylewwefan wrote: »

Thanks! On light armor saptank I use leeching plate/ Baharas Curse/ Monster. It's a Gilliam pseudo build.....I think he uses all heavy, but I found "curse" pieces easier to acquire in light. So I kind of went with it for testing and it has been working well. I'm using all leeching jewelry and leeching S/B.

I read that the 40% less trap damage applies to ground AOE which might be a contributing factor to how well I can tank in 5 LA. Also, I'm vampire so the undeath passives surely help a bit.

I was greatly mistaken with my resistance numbers..it's more like 21k physical, 23k spell resist with Swarm Mother, but I wear lord warden quite a bit and that puts me closer to 27k spell....I know I couldn't Tank a vet trial with that. LOL! But dungeons is ok to pretty good.


On Vet Trials, I tried Ebon/ Alkosh and it did not work so good. Think I switched to footman/ armormaster / lord warden and barely made it through. Resistance is way way over cap with that setup, like 40k.

I used all shield play enchants on jewelry ....I may have 1 on my DK tank and contemplating changing that to mag recovery.

@kylewwefan

I'm gonna have to test the 40% less trap damage thing but I really think it doesn't work that way. Also I tank Veteran Trials with 27k resistance, that is just fine. Resistance can be very much so overrated. Like I said, you want to get armor mitigation from other sources more so than resistance. Armor master is way over the top in terms of resistance and will always bump you really high up there, too high. Footman is not worth it either, that 8% doesn't equal to much in the grand scheme of things. Lets do a quick check of what you can do as a Nightblade

MITIGATION=100-(100*(1-27000/662/100)*(1-50/100)*(1-20/100)*(1-8/100)*(1-15/100)*(1-10/100))=83.3299335347

So that is 27k resist, 50% from blocking, 20% from Sword and board passive, 8% from absorb magic, 15% from minor maim and 10% from Hardy/Elemental Defender. I did 10% on the CP ones cause they are getting nerfed with morrowind, but technically if you go all out on both of them you can get ~86.1% total mitigation. Those are perfect numbers. All you got to do is keep that Minor maim up, and as a NB you can either use your Shades or the Heroic slash from Sword and Shield. One thing you want to do as well is this, keep Mirage up at all times and I would also recommend using Refreshing path with Heavy armor set up. It will give you great up time on Shadow Barrier Passive all the while healing you and your allies.

Those skills will give you all in all, Minor Main, Major Evasion, Minor Ward and Resolve and Major Ward and Resolve plus a heal. I would also recommend to go heavy into block cost reduction. Doing 100p into Shadow Ward with 3 block cost reduction glyphs plus 8 Sturdy makes you able to block basically forever. Using a animation canceled version of light attack while Siphoning Attacks is active gives you incredible sustain.

WalksonGraves

Knightmare is a highly under rated tanking set as nothing else applies aoe maim. Unfortunately this does nothing for single targets, but it's the great for neutralizing groups.

paulsimonps

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Knightmare is a highly under rated tanking set as nothing else applies aoe maim. Unfortunately this does nothing for single targets, but it's the great for neutralizing groups.

Dragonknights, Draconic Power Skill line, Dark Talons, Morphed to Choking Talons:

"Call forth Talons from the ground to deal Physical Damage and immobilize nearby enemies for 4 seconds. Talons also afflict enemies with Minor Maim, reducing their damage by 15% for 7 seconds"

Its one of many reason why Dragonknights are Meta Tanks. They have things most classes have to use 5 piece sets to get. Same thing with DK's AoE interrupt and their quick chains.

Also the new warden will be able to deal out AoE Minor Maim with their Cold Damage, When enemies get chilled they get minor maim. Obviously not as effective as Talons but its something at least.

EDIT: Also while not commonly used, the Deep Slash morph of Low Slash deals Minor Maim on 3 targets rather than just one, so technically an AoE Minor Main.

WalksonGraves

paulsimonps wrote: »

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Knightmare is a highly under rated tanking set as nothing else applies aoe maim. Unfortunately this does nothing for single targets, but it's the great for neutralizing groups.

Dragonknights, Draconic Power Skill line, Dark Talons, Morphed to Choking Talons:

"Call forth Talons from the ground to deal Physical Damage and immobilize nearby enemies for 4 seconds. Talons also afflict enemies with Minor Maim, reducing their damage by 15% for 7 seconds"

Its one of many reason why Dragonknights are Meta Tanks. They have things most classes have to use 5 piece sets to get. Same thing with DK's AoE interrupt and their quick chains.

Also the new warden will be able to deal out AoE Minor Maim with their Cold Damage, When enemies get chilled they get minor maim. Obviously not as effective as Talons but its something at least.

EDIT: Also while not commonly used, the Deep Slash morph of Low Slash deals Minor Maim on 3 targets rather than just one, so technically an AoE Minor Main.

Never use low slash since I use shades, forgot about the morph. If anything I think frost damage is far more effective than talons if you take range into consideration.