[Update 21] Nord "Rugged" passive — a mathematical analysis

TheYKcid · January 2019

As of today's dev notes regarding the upcoming racial changes, the new effect of the Nord "Rugged" passive will be changed to provide 3960 Physical and Spell Resistance, in contrast to its current effect of 6% damage reduction. Some posters have claimed this will be universally worse than the current version, because "3960 resistance = 6%", and doesn't work against bleeds.

However, the math is a little more complex than that: while 3960/660 = 6% more armor in an absolute sense, it doesn't take into account the marginal gain, relative to how much armor you already had.

For example:
going from 29040 > 33000 resistance (the cap), your armor value goes from 44% > 50% (6% as expected). But, inversely, the amount of incoming damage you receive has decreased from 56% > 50%, meaning you have gained 1-(50/56) = 10.7% more survivability relative to your baseline, much more than the presumed 6%. In other words, adding extra resistances becomes more effective the more armor you previously had, increasingly exponentially until you hit the resist cap.

The old Rugged passive, on the other hand, is applied multiplicatively during mitigation calculations, and thus always adds 6% regardless.

Here is a graph depicting how much mitigation the new passive will provide, dependent on your build's existing resistances. As how much resistance you effectively have also depends on your opponent's penetration, I've also accounted for different penetration values (0, 5k, 10k, 15k):

Some observations:

Under normal circumstances, you can expect it to equal or outperform the old version, giving anywhere from 6 - 10.7% mitigation.
If you are being over-penetrated by your opponent (lel), the new Rugged can be significantly worse than 6%, but this should be rare on most builds.
If Rugged overshoots the resist cap, it will be partially wasted (which explains the dip from 10.7 > 8.3 on the "0 pen" curve).

In summary, you can expect the new iteration of Rugged to perform better than it currently does, as long as you aren't currently nearing the resist cap or being overpenetrated. One notable exception would be bleeds, since they completely ignore resistances.

There will be no difference vs. Oblivion damage, since this always ignores resistances AND %-based mitigation.

Undefwun · January 2019

And that's how you write an analysis of new passives...

The rest of the forum is doing this..

Vapirko · January 2019

Nice job, now analyze all the new orc stats please

TheYKcid · January 2019

@Vapirko I'm extremely curious about that, myself. But I'd first need to know whether the new Unflinching passive (stam & HP restore) procs strictly on weapon abilities only, or if light & heavy attacks are included.

It's the difference between being an extremely reliable source of sustain & passive healing... or entirely useless on certain builds.

My best guess says that they should be counted, since current proc conditions that state "weapon abilities" (eg. the Red Mountain & Way Of Fire sets) do proc on light & heavy weaves.

But you never know when it comes to ZOS coding & tooltips—so we'll have to wait for PTS.

Davadin · January 2019

awesome info! thank you!

now to figure out how effective 5 ulti/10 sec is....

Minno · January 2019

Don't forget bleeds! The previous 6% nord passive reduced bleeds (which is kinda funny from a lore perspective lol).

TheYKcid · January 2019

Davadin wrote: »

awesome info! thank you!

now to figure out how effective 5 ulti/10 sec is....

I think it's gonna be great. It gives 75% the ultgen rate of Minor Heroism. That's faster Warhorns and more sustain on a DK tank. I don't have the endgame tanking experience to quantify it any more than that, though.

Minno wrote: »

Don't forget bleeds! The previous 6% nord passive reduced bleeds (which is kinda funny from a lore perspective lol).

Yep, I mentioned that at the end of the OP, and it certainly counterweighs the new benefits. No idea why they didn't just give a 2-3% bump to the old passive instead—would've been less variable and more reliable.

Davadin · January 2019

PS: this could go well with DK's Spiked Armor that gives 5.2k resistance......

Minno · January 2019

TheYKcid wrote: »

Davadin wrote: »

awesome info! thank you!

now to figure out how effective 5 ulti/10 sec is....

I think it's gonna be great. It gives 75% the ultgen rate of Minor Heroism. That's faster Warhorns and more sustain on a DK tank. I don't have the endgame tanking experience to quantify it any more than that, though.

Minno wrote: »

Don't forget bleeds! The previous 6% nord passive reduced bleeds (which is kinda funny from a lore perspective lol).

Yep, I mentioned that at the end of the OP, and it certainly counterweighs the new benefits. No idea why they didn't just give a 2-3% bump to the old passive instead—would've been less variable and more reliable.

Could be for shield users. The armor is also the 3rd mitigation to start reducing (first being crit resists and second all maim sources) so it will feel more substantial in gameplay. Plus easier to stack armor than say specific percentage based mitigation.

sneakymitchell · January 2019

Undefwun wrote: »

And that's how you write an analysis of new passives...

The rest of the forum is doing this..

Funny my mains are nord getting analyzed while the other races haven’t waited till PTS yet to test.

TheYKcid · January 2019

Minno wrote: »

TheYKcid wrote: »

Davadin wrote: »

awesome info! thank you!

now to figure out how effective 5 ulti/10 sec is....

I think it's gonna be great. It gives 75% the ultgen rate of Minor Heroism. That's faster Warhorns and more sustain on a DK tank. I don't have the endgame tanking experience to quantify it any more than that, though.

Minno wrote: »

Don't forget bleeds! The previous 6% nord passive reduced bleeds (which is kinda funny from a lore perspective lol).

Yep, I mentioned that at the end of the OP, and it certainly counterweighs the new benefits. No idea why they didn't just give a 2-3% bump to the old passive instead—would've been less variable and more reliable.

Could be for shield users. The armor is also the 3rd mitigation to start reducing (first being crit resists and second all maim sources) so it will feel more substantial in gameplay. Plus easier to stack armor than say specific percentage based mitigation.

It isn't calculated that way. We might place armor first when we're writing the mitigation equations (for simplicity's sake or whatever), but all the distinct components are multiplicative with each other, so their order on paper is irrelevant.

6% will still give a 6% net increase to your mitigation, regardless of where in the equation you put it.

clocksstoppe · January 2019

So if you have armor cap without racial it gives 0. There goes your math

ZeroXFF · January 2019

1. Resist cap is 33.1k. The correct calculation would be 3960/662 = 5.98.

2. This is a 6% nerf to people who were already at resist cap and were using Nords to go beyond what resistances provide. This is not a critical issue since they can switch gear to get other set bonuses except...

3. Nord Templars in heavy armor (i.e. tanks) will be over the resist cap even without any set bonuses/CPs into resistances. So it's completely wasted stats for them unless the cap gets increased too (something that might happen if they decide to remove CPs now that they are reevaluating that too).

TheYKcid · January 2019

clocksstoppe wrote: »

So if you have armor cap without racial it gives 0. There goes your math

Not at all. You could be at armor cap (33000) before the passive, but if your opponent applies Major Fracture/Breach to you, you drop to 27720.

But as mentioned in the OP, it possible to partially waste the passive if you're already near the cap, which is why the green graph bounces and starts heading downwards once it meets the dotted line—the max possible bonus from 10.7%, after which you exceed the cap. If the X axis was extended further to the right, you'd see the same for the other graphs.

Obviously surpassing the cap gets you no benefit. That's just common sense and hardly requires math.

Practically speaking, with the amount of penetration people run in PvP, I don't see any remotely functional build surpassing the cap, though. As a PvE tank possibly? But you'd need Bloodspawn + Lord Warden procs.

TheYKcid · January 2019

@ZeroXFF the 33.1k cap was a myth, and it stems from the fact that all players used to have an innate 100 penetration, thereby making the "effective" cap 33100. The formula has always been 660 resists to 1% of armor, and the inbuilt 100 pen got removed with Murkmire so this is more apparent than ever.

5H2M heavy armor is 21385 resists, if you maximise by putting one heavy piece on the chest. The Aedric passive gives 2640 spell res. So you're looking at 27985 spell res with the addition of the new Rugged, and even less for physical.

Now I'm not sure if you're talking about PvE or PvP, but in the latter, most builds will have access to anywhere from 5-10k penetration or more, from a combination of debuffs, CPs and gear. Which pulls you even further below the cap.

Look at the curves representing enemy penetration—you've only hit the cap once the curve bumps-up against the dotted line (at 10.7% on the Y-axis). Against an enemy with no pen whatsoever, you'd already need 29040 before Rugged. If they have 5k pen, add this to make it 34040, so on and so forth. All are highly improbable numbers.

FYI never spec CPs into the resistances stars. They are much more numerically efficient in the %-mitigation stars.

Danksta · January 2019

clocksstoppe wrote: »

So if you have armor cap without racial it gives 0. There goes your math

That's mostly correct for PvE, not so much for PvP.

Lord_Eomer · January 2019

TheYKcid wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

TheYKcid wrote: »

Davadin wrote: »

awesome info! thank you!

now to figure out how effective 5 ulti/10 sec is....

I think it's gonna be great. It gives 75% the ultgen rate of Minor Heroism. That's faster Warhorns and more sustain on a DK tank. I don't have the endgame tanking experience to quantify it any more than that, though.

Minno wrote: »

Don't forget bleeds! The previous 6% nord passive reduced bleeds (which is kinda funny from a lore perspective lol).

Yep, I mentioned that at the end of the OP, and it certainly counterweighs the new benefits. No idea why they didn't just give a 2-3% bump to the old passive instead—would've been less variable and more reliable.

Could be for shield users. The armor is also the 3rd mitigation to start reducing (first being crit resists and second all maim sources) so it will feel more substantial in gameplay. Plus easier to stack armor than say specific percentage based mitigation.

It isn't calculated that way. We might place armor first when we're writing the mitigation equations (for simplicity's sake or whatever), but all the distinct components are multiplicative with each other, so their order on paper is irrelevant.

6% will still give a 6% net increase to your mitigation, regardless of where in the equation you put it.

6% reduction of previous passive was not giving flat 6% damage reduction,

New change is much better!

lassitershawn · January 2019

TheYKcid wrote: »

Davadin wrote: »

awesome info! thank you!

now to figure out how effective 5 ulti/10 sec is....

I think it's gonna be great. It gives 75% the ultgen rate of Minor Heroism. That's faster Warhorns and more sustain on a DK tank. I don't have the endgame tanking experience to quantify it any more than that, though.

Minno wrote: »

Don't forget bleeds! The previous 6% nord passive reduced bleeds (which is kinda funny from a lore perspective lol).

Yep, I mentioned that at the end of the OP, and it certainly counterweighs the new benefits. No idea why they didn't just give a 2-3% bump to the old passive instead—would've been less variable and more reliable.

Yes for endgame PvE this is going to be an important change. More warhorns even if it is just a single extra warhorn in a fight is a substantial amount of DPS. The 6% passive also didn't end up being 6%, almost all endgame PvE tanks that I know are excited for nord passive changes.

ZeroXFF · January 2019

TheYKcid wrote: »

@ZeroXFF the 33.1k cap was a myth, and it stems from the fact that all players used to have an innate 100 penetration, thereby making the "effective" cap 33100. The formula has always been 660 resists to 1% of armor, and the inbuilt 100 pen got removed with Murkmire so this is more apparent than ever.

5H2M heavy armor is 21385 resists, if you maximise by putting one heavy piece on the chest. The Aedric passive gives 2640 spell res. So you're looking at 27985 spell res with the addition of the new Rugged, and even less for physical.

Now I'm not sure if you're talking about PvE or PvP, but in the latter, most builds will have access to anywhere from 5-10k penetration or more, from a combination of debuffs, CPs and gear. Which pulls you even further below the cap.

Look at the curves representing enemy penetration—you've only hit the cap once the curve bumps-up against the dotted line (at 10.7% on the Y-axis). Against an enemy with no pen whatsoever, you'd already need 29040 before Rugged. If they have 5k pen, add this to make it 34040, so on and so forth. All are highly improbable numbers.

FYI never spec CPs into the resistances stars. They are much more numerically efficient in the %-mitigation stars.

Wrong. Check the tank discord. There was a discussion specifically about the 0.1k being down to the base penetration, so someone went out and tested it in vAS (so no base pen from players) and 33100 provided more dmg reduction than 33099, while anything over 33100 provided no improvement. So the real myth is that 33100 being a cap is a myth.

And I don't know what the exact values are (not at home right now), but I know that my Altmer Templar reaches spell resist cap with just a single reinforced piece of armor OR like 1-3 CPs in spell resist. So the spell resist would be almost entirely wasted. And considering that the spell resist passive from Templars is 2.5k, about 1.5k of the physical resist from the nord passive would be wasted too.

The reason for such high resistances on Templars is the nearly 8k they get from their class major resist buff as opposed to the usual 5k.

Also, I'm talking about PvE. PvP doesn't matter if something doesn't work in PvE already, so I'm not even going to talk about penetration.

TheYKcid · January 2019

@lassitershawn That's interesting. What was the testing methodology? The most reliable way I could think of would be to record damage taken from a standardised source with Rugged unspecced, and then again after investing points into the passive.

@ZeroXFF I'll have to look into that. All my sources have always shown 660, and it makes sense seeing as the formula is 500 per percent of mitigation at level 50 (for players and monsters) plus another 160 as you scale-up to cp160. Interesting stuff. Also I'll admit I forgot about the bonus resists from standing within rune, I can see how that might make it easier for Plars to exceed cap.

lassitershawn · January 2019

TheYKcid wrote: »

@lassitershawn That's interesting. What was the testing methodology? The most reliable way I could think of would be to record damage taken from a standardised source with Rugged unspecced, and then again after investing points into the passive.

@ZeroXFF I'll have to look into that. All my sources have always shown 660, and it makes sense seeing as the formula is 500 per percent of mitigation at level 50 (for players and monsters) plus another 160 as you scale-up to cp160. Interesting stuff. Also I'll admit I forgot about the bonus resists from standing within rune, I can see how that might make it easier for Plars to exceed cap.

I'll go test it but it has been known for a long time that it was never the full 6% "off the top."

kojou · January 2019

I think this is great news for my Nord DK PvE tank.

I would like to see the cool down be a few seconds lower for the ult regen passive, but overall this is going to be great.

olsborg · January 2019

Bleeds needs a nerf tho, just sayin..

NordSwordnBoard · January 2019

While I like my Nord Sorc's shields to get more resistance via the buff, the loss on health also factors into the shield size.

Ultimate gen through spell symmetry out of combat in PvP with reduced ultimate from class?

Staying tuned to the PTS on this, it certainly is interesting.

sneakymitchell · January 2019

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

While I like my Nord Sorc's shields to get more resistance via the buff, the loss on health also factors into the shield size.

Ultimate gen through spell symmetry out of combat in PvP with reduced ultimate from class?

Staying tuned to the PTS on this, it certainly is interesting.

When you use new nord passive on ultimate regen then realize it requires you to take damage and you start chugging Down poison pots.

NordSwordnBoard · January 2019

sneakymitchell wrote: »

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

While I like my Nord Sorc's shields to get more resistance via the buff, the loss on health also factors into the shield size.

Ultimate gen through spell symmetry out of combat in PvP with reduced ultimate from class?

Staying tuned to the PTS on this, it certainly is interesting.

When you use new nord passive on ultimate regen then realize it requires you to take damage and you start chugging Down poison pots.

Always wondered what the use for those was!

In other news I think HA and 2chudan puts Nord over cap for resistance. That seems unintended.

ZeroXFF · January 2019

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

sneakymitchell wrote: »

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

While I like my Nord Sorc's shields to get more resistance via the buff, the loss on health also factors into the shield size.

Ultimate gen through spell symmetry out of combat in PvP with reduced ultimate from class?

Staying tuned to the PTS on this, it certainly is interesting.

When you use new nord passive on ultimate regen then realize it requires you to take damage and you start chugging Down poison pots.

Always wondered what the use for those was!

In other news I think HA and 2chudan puts Nord over cap for resistance. That seems unintended.

I'm hoping for resist cap increase, which will be pretty much a necessity if they decide to remove CPs in their current form. But yeah, in the mean time, for next patch, you'll just have to wear something else.

barshemm · January 2019

TheYKcid wrote: »

@Vapirko I'm extremely curious about that, myself. But I'd first need to know whether the new Unflinching passive (stam & HP restore) procs strictly on weapon abilities only, or if light & heavy attacks are included.

It's the difference between being an extremely reliable source of sustain & passive healing... or entirely useless on certain builds.

My best guess says that they should be counted, since current proc conditions that state "weapon abilities" (eg. the Red Mountain & Way Of Fire sets) do proc on light & heavy weaves.

But you never know when it comes to ZOS coding & tooltips—so we'll have to wait for PTS.

There has a big catch though. Even if the passive healing works on light attacks, they still offer nothing when you have to go defensive. Stam sorc for example already has it's class heal tied to offensive attacks. You los and dots wear off, no crit surge heal. Right now due to passives, orc Stam sorc has vigor and higher health recovery to reset. Health recovery especially important as it's no cost vs vigor shares the same pool as your roll dodge and sprint.

IronWooshu · January 2019

Minno wrote: »

Don't forget bleeds! The previous 6% nord passive reduced bleeds (which is kinda funny from a lore perspective lol).

@Minno ZOS is aware bleed builds are OP and have acknowledged they are, I would almost bet that next week or sometime this year bleeds will be nerfed, I am thinking bleeds will get mitigated by resistances which will make our passive even stronger.

Ragnarock41 · January 2019

IronWooshu wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

Don't forget bleeds! The previous 6% nord passive reduced bleeds (which is kinda funny from a lore perspective lol).

@Minno ZOS is aware bleed builds are OP and have acknowledged they are, I would almost bet that next week or sometime this year bleeds will be nerfed, I am thinking bleeds will get mitigated by resistances which will make our passive even stronger.

Any source for that?

katorga · January 2019

6% off bleeds is not much, and that 6% suffers diminishing returns if you also have another reduction stacked. Minor protection (8%) and Rugged (6%) becomes 12.5%, not 14%. With straight resistances, no diminishing returns, except for doing nothing for bleeds, and you can over cap enough to mitigate resistance debuffs in pvp. Fair change in my view, especially in exchange for the ultimate generation.