Jhalin wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Tanks will benefit most from this because they can easily maintain 5 stacks for the duration of combat (where DPS will only have about 2-3 average) and from a single cast. Tanks also have the most incoming damage, which makes mitigation more important to them. And there is no diminishing return on this multiplicative damage reduction buff. Regardless of any other defensive buffs you have, the incoming damage with this buff is going to be 15% lower than incoming damage without this buff.

What an oversimplified and inaccurate way of looking at the value of this skill’s mitigation

PvE tanks benefit the least from slotting on this ability.

Consider a 50k hit. Going in order of highest values because that will always be - key priority order for what stays on vs what goes from a build.

- 50k initial hit

*consistent, no build up*
- 33k resists - 50% damage reduction
- 25k mitigated, total mitigation 25k/50k (50%)
- - new hit 25k, 50% mitigation added

**no buildup, blocks normal CC, cost stamina constantly**
- Blocking - 50% damage reduction
- 12.5k mitigated, total mitigation 37.5k/50k (75%)
- - new hit 12.5k, 25% mitigation added

**consistent, no build up**
- 81 Ironclad - 24% damage reduction
- 3k mitigated, total mitigation 40.5k/50k (81%)
- - new hit 9.5k, 6% mitigation added

**inconsistent, 5 GCD build up, has initial cost**
- 5 stacks of held Focus - 15% damage reduction
- 1,425 mitigated
- total mitigation 41,925/50k (83.85%)
- new hit 8,075, 2.85% mitigation added

**consistent, no build up**
- 56 Hardy/Ele Def - 13% damage reduction
- 1,050 mitigated, total mitigation 42,975/50k (85.95%)
- - new hit 7,025, 2.1% mitigation added

You could slot this over Temporal Guard, or dump all your Hardy/Ele Def CP in Quick Recovery, but really why go to that trouble for a measly 3% increase when there are other abilities that have much more utility. Why not run another shadow ability for the extra health at that point? It will have more effective value than stacking another mitigation source.

Here’s the problem with that logic, the baseline values (such as enemy’s tooltip damage) is a meaningless value that varies widely and is scaled differently for attacks that are intended to hit a tank or a DD/healer (just look at the difference between ZMaja’s typical mind blast vs the more powerful cognitve comber that hits the tank).

So there are attacks that typically hit a heavily armored tank for 10k. If they apply this 15% mitigation those attacks then hit for 8.5k. There are different attacks that are directed at non-tanks and hit them for 10k. If they apply this 15% mitigation those attacks hit them for 8.5k. The buff is equally useful on all builds, regardless of other sources of mitigation, that cannot be called diminishing return.

Now looking at the 2 cases above, some claim that the tank’s 15% is less valuable because that 10k heavy attack would’ve hit a naked target for 100k, and the 1.5k reduction of a 100k attack is minimal. The 10k attack on a lightly armored player may have only hit a naked target for 15k, so they claim it is more valuable since it lowered the 15k attack to 1.5k. But this reasoning is flawed, in both cases the recipient of the damage took exactly 15% less damage than they would have without the buff, increasing their effective toughness by exactly the same multiplier.

To dive deeper into the nonsense of the “diminishing return” argument, let’s consider if it worked another way. Hypothetically the 15% could be taken off additively from the enemy’s unmitigated attack value. The 100k strike would be reduced by 15k after all their other sources of mitigation were calculated. Well we already said that it was only hitting them for 10k after armor and CP’s, so now the attack would be doing absolutely nothing. The additive method of 15% mitigation has taken their 10k hit and reduced it to 0, adding infinite mitigation and increasing their effective toughness to infinity. Clearly this model would not be a “flat return” as the return significantly increases the more you invest into it.

In reality the multiplicative calculation is the one giving a true flat return on mitigation stacking, not increasing, not diminishing. It can never produce invincibility, but it also cannot become useless.


At 5 stacks it literally gives the same amount of mitigation as 100 points Hardy + 100 points Elemental Defender (and it stacks with these, multiplicatively of course). Try telling PVE tanks that those 2 CP’s are not beneficial to them because they already have so many other sources of mitigation.

There have been many misleading calculations on this topic this week (not wrong math, but wrong conclusions), that try to show how weak the 15% is by shrinking its value by things like blocking, debuffs, battlespirit, etc. None of this matters.

In reality it is a very simple concept, look at the amount of damage you take from any attack currently, and this number will be 15% lower with Grim Focus stacks.