[Mod22] Vanguard Fighter Defensive Route: Guide + Build

nevertwi

Update for Mod 22 available under https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x6ZUmU_I7yGxFk5JVcuY380a_rSD7mOwwVhqyvNgI_M/edit?usp=sharing!

The first version of my Vanguard Guide is finished and can be found under:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ooXVTS86drGQmPomkoWtKa5nlVEjEejj0oedxGj0snI
There are still some minor things to tweak and added but overall it is done.
Enjoy reading! Feedback is of course welcome.

rjc9000

That is a name I have not seen in a long time.
In a DOCUMENT guide?
With detailed calculations on minimum stat investment needed to survive tank checks?
AND In this post Mod 16 NW?

Unreal!

There are some other things I'd like to nitpick on, such as:

nevertwi said:

Use any Encounter Power that deals damage and trigger ‘Retaliate’.

This is an error and a very big one for your best or second best aggro builder.
Retaliate works the other way around, you need to *take damage* to trigger Retaliate.
When you take damage while holding down the squat button, your shield (the actual item your character holds) will briefly glow red.
Release the button for Retaliate.

It hits in an AoE, has the valuable aggro multiplier like Threatening Rush, has good base damage, and 10 second cooldown.

You can use this at the start of combat for a healthy aggro lead, can use after Shield Throwing a pack of mobs to get their attention then Retaliate a pack of mobs, or just use it every 10 seconds for the damage. It is a versatile and flavorful tool that needs greater attention from players.

nevertwi said:

>Enforced Threat: Accuracy is often not capped by the dps players and thus increases the damage the enemy takes. Thus it is the best Fighters support skill.

This is partially wrong and is underselling the bonus. Enforced Threat works on enemy *Awareness* and Awareness is countered by player Combat Advantage, not player Accuracy.

In addition, because it is a reduction to enemy stats, it will always have an effect even if your DPS have their stats capped.
Mathematically speaking for DPS increase, it is the same as adding +10% CA, but it goes outside the cap.

nevertwi said:

How to tank versus great Damage Dealers?

I am disappointed you did not mention the laziest solution: press Knight's Valor on a DPS in the party during artifact calls.

nevertwi said:

Anvil of Challenge: Good for aggro switching of single mobs only. Currently there is no content available to justify its use. Enforced Threat is just better from the get go.

A niche use would be the devils Zariel's Challenge Phase 2, just so you don't accidentally hit both devils with Enforced Threat's AoE.

nevertwi said:

Combat Balance: Great feat. Reduces incoming damage by ~7-8% on typical builds without Deflect and when not blocking. Reliable, no Cooldown and preventive!

The DR bonus is calculated as the Coefficient of Variation of the three stat ratings, times 10%. You should point out that there is no point in going crazy over the stat juggling of Combat Balance. You have to actively try to get the bonus below 5-6%.

nevertwi said:

Perfect Block: One simply cannot die while the daily is active and any incoming hit is blocked!

From what I remember checking, it does not work on *everything*. I want to say it works on attacks that can be dodged, but does not work on attacks with Piercing damage (the ones with a skull on them).

One notable exception I tried was Halaster's balls, which *is* a situation I would want Perfect Block on if I'm solotanking.

nevertwi said:

Staying Power: The tier 1 feat that increases At-Will threat on mob groups and boss fights for a few seconds. The all rounder feat but less worthy than Shieldthrower for holding aggro on bursts.

While it pales in comparison to how good Shieldthrower is, from what @wilbur626 tried long ago, Staying Power does nothing on the at-wills you'd want it on like Cleave or Threatening Rush.

If anything, he suspects the feat is using the Mod 16 beta version of the feat that only worked on the guarding At-wills.

nevertwi said:

Block: The typical block mechanic. Useful to generate AP,

This is underselling how good Block is ... as a mechanic to cheese Action Point gain. It generates 22.00 AP (2.2% at base) per second you hold it in combat.

Hold it in between phases or when the game wants you to sit in a corner and never run out of dailies ever again.

nevertwi said:

Second Wind: The best daily for survivability and aggro on bosses. Not only increases Hit Points by 20%, but also heals on dealing damage (heals=threat).

Second Wind restore 40% of the attack’s damage as HP recovered. For purposes of the heal, the game counts post mitigated damage and is affected by both incoming (and humorously) outgoing healing bonuses.

nevertwi said:

Halfling (+5% Deflect, +2 Dex +2 Cha or Con, +10% Control Resistance)

Halfling has a niche and funny side benefit: their small hitbox causes some mechanics to miss you, such as the IC Boss 3's lasers.

nevertwi

rjc9000 said:

That is a name I have not seen in a long time.
In a DOCUMENT guide?
With detailed calculations on minimum stat investment needed to survive tank checks?
AND In this post Mod 16 NW?

Unreal!

Hehe, i kinda of expected such a comment. Sometimes the game is just less fun than writing guides ...

rjc9000 said:

There are some other things I'd like to nitpick on, such as:

Let's go through them one by one.

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

Use any Encounter Power that deals damage and trigger ‘Retaliate’.

This is an error and a very big one for your best or second best aggro builder.
Retaliate works the other way around, you need to *take damage* to trigger Retaliate.
When you take damage while holding down the squat button, your shield (the actual item your character holds) will briefly glow red.
Release the button for Retaliate.

It hits in an AoE, has the valuable aggro multiplier like Threatening Rush, has good base damage, and 10 second cooldown.

You can use this at the start of combat for a healthy aggro lead, can use after Shield Throwing a pack of mobs to get their attention then Retaliate a pack of mobs, or just use it every 10 seconds for the damage. It is a versatile and flavorful tool that needs greater attention from players.

Hm, the 'and' in the sentence was not meant to imply that Retaliate is triggered by using Encounter Powers. It was meant to use Retaliate complementary with Encounter Powers, because it did not want to give a specific order of using them. You are of course correct with the description of Retaliate. I rewrote it to "Use any Encounter Power that deals damage and trigger ‘Retaliate’ by releasing ‘Dig In’ shortly after blocking an attack." to avoid further confusion.

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

>Enforced Threat: Accuracy is often not capped by the dps players and thus increases the damage the enemy takes. Thus it is the best Fighters support skill.

This is partially wrong and is underselling the bonus. Enforced Threat works on enemy *Awareness* and Awareness is countered by player Combat Advantage, not player Accuracy.

In addition, because it is a reduction to enemy stats, it will always have an effect even if your DPS have their stats capped.
Mathematically speaking for DPS increase, it is the same as adding +10% CA, but it goes outside the cap.

I knew that I forgot to fix 'Accuracy' somewhere. It is indeed Combat Advantage. It was stated as CA under "How to tank versus great Damage Dealers?". However still wrong there because i did not knew that it goes beyond the cap!
I have to say that I did not test how the -10% interacts with capped CA though, because I need a second person with such a high CA and stats that do not change once an attack is applied to a dummy...

Today, i took the time to build such a toon and asked one of the rare Fighters on preview to apply ET on a dummy and it indeed goes beyond the cap! Based on this, I rewrote the description of ET and fixed the other text lines. Thanks!

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

How to tank versus great Damage Dealers?

I am disappointed you did not mention the laziest solution: press Knight's Valor on a DPS in the party during artifact calls.

Hm, this is one of the cases I am not sure about. I did not mention KV to get aggro because from the very few tests I did, it did not helped. For example there was one HR in VoS that out did my aggro management and placed himself next to me but he still managed to take Aggro when KV was active. I think that was not the only case I had back then. But could be bad memory or extremely bad luck that the healer got KVed and myself did not notice? Nvm, I added '(Next to using KV?)' to the section title to leave that point open for now.

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

Anvil of Challenge: Good for aggro switching of single mobs only. Currently there is no content available to justify its use. Enforced Threat is just better from the get go.

A niche use would be the devils Zariel's Challenge Phase 2, just so you don't accidentally hit both devils with Enforced Threat's AoE.

Thanks, added it to 'Anvil of Doom' and its feat.

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

Combat Balance: Great feat. Reduces incoming damage by ~7-8% on typical builds without Deflect and when not blocking. Reliable, no Cooldown and preventive!

The DR bonus is calculated as the Coefficient of Variation of the three stat ratings, times 10%. You should point out that there is no point in going crazy over the stat juggling of Combat Balance. You have to actively try to get the bonus below 5-6%.

I am a bit puzzled about that formula. If all values are the same, then the standard deviation is 0. And 0/Mean times 10% is still 0. How is it calculated?

I will leave the remaining points open for later.

wilbur626

Extremely solid work @nevertwi !

rjc9000

nevertwi said:

I am a bit puzzled about that formula. If all values are the same, then the standard deviation is 0. And 0/Mean times 10% is still 0. How is it calculated?

Sorry, should have rephrased that to:
"(1-Coefficient of Variation)* 10%".



Spreadsheet is not mine, was passed around on a Goofy Fighter discord and just downloaded and archived by me.

nevertwi

wilbur626 said:

Extremely solid work @nevertwi !

Thanks! My pleasure!

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

I am a bit puzzled about that formula. If all values are the same, then the standard deviation is 0. And 0/Mean times 10% is still 0. How is it calculated?

Sorry, should have rephrased that to:
"(1-Coefficient of Variation)* 10%".

Spreadsheet is not mine, was passed around on a Goofy Fighter discord and just downloaded and archived by me.

Thanks, I simplified the formula (to CB=0.9 + Min(CV/10;0.1), to be able to use it as a coefficient as most other damage reductions) and added it to the guide.

nevertwi

Now to the remaining points:

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

Perfect Block: One simply cannot die while the daily is active and any incoming hit is blocked!

From what I remember checking, it does not work on *everything*. I want to say it works on attacks that can be dodged, but does not work on attacks with Piercing damage (the ones with a skull on them).

One notable exception I tried was Halaster's balls, which *is* a situation I would want Perfect Block on if I'm solotanking.

Tested and verified. Thanks, added both points to the guide.

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

Staying Power: The tier 1 feat that increases At-Will threat on mob groups and boss fights for a few seconds. The all rounder feat but less worthy than Shieldthrower for holding aggro on bursts.

While it pales in comparison to how good Shieldthrower is, from what @wilbur626 tried long ago, Staying Power does nothing on the at-wills you'd want it on like Cleave or Threatening Rush.

If anything, he suspects the feat is using the Mod 16 beta version of the feat that only worked on the guarding At-wills.

Can not verify it due to the unknown threat formula ... I have put a warning to Power, stating that it may be broken.

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

Block: The typical block mechanic. Useful to generate AP,

This is underselling how good Block is ... as a mechanic to cheese Action Point gain. It generates 22.00 AP (2.2% at base) per second you hold it in combat.

Hold it in between phases or when the game wants you to sit in a corner and never run out of dailies ever again.

This got me confused first. I still expected to have a base Action Point gain of 1.666% for each Power (thus 1 Daily per Minute), but that is certainly wrong. Now EVERY action has a base Action Point Gain of 2.2% (1 Daily every 45.45 seconds). Block is thus no exception. However i added the clear recommendation to use it in between of phases. Dig In is actually slightly better for it because it triggers every 1/4 second (for a quarter AP of course) while Blocking does only once per second.

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

Second Wind: The best daily for survivability and aggro on bosses. Not only increases Hit Points by 20%, but also heals on dealing damage (heals=threat).

Second Wind restore 40% of the attack’s damage as HP recovered. For purposes of the heal, the game counts post mitigated damage and is affected by both incoming (and humorously) outgoing healing bonuses.

This had cost me quite some time. Tried to recalculate the exact amounts of damage and heals by using the damage formula, but certainly stumbled over several bugs (Why the hell does Tide of Iron use the Magical Damage Boost as the only exception instead of the Physical Damage Boost when TOI is the power that i used for testing?, not updated stats after Zone and Gear Switches, broken damage formula for leveling zones ...).

The result was that it is indeed 40%, but not only uses Incoming and Outgoing Healing Stats but Power too!
Thus the formula for Second Wind is: Post mitigated Damage*0.4*(1+Power%)*(1+Outgoing Healing%)*(1+Incoming Healing%)

Actually there are still some errors in the formula when i take a more advanced toon.

rjc9000 said:

nevertwi said:

Halfling (+5% Deflect, +2 Dex +2 Cha or Con, +10% Control Resistance)

Halfling has a niche and funny side benefit: their small hitbox causes some mechanics to miss you, such as the IC Boss 3's lasers.

This confuses me: Devs said that every toon has the same hitbox and thus this should not happen. Do you mean that you take no damage at IC third Boss on laser no matter where you stand?

rjc9000

nevertwi said:

This got me confused first. I still expected to have a base Action Point gain of 1.666% for each Power (thus 1 Daily per Minute), but that is certainly wrong. Now EVERY action has a base Action Point Gain of 2.2% (1 Daily every 45.45 seconds). Block is thus no exception. However i added the clear recommendation to use it in between of phases. Dig In is actually slightly better for it because it triggers every 1/4 second (for a quarter AP of course) while Blocking does only once per second.

You were right about passive AP Gain up until Mod 20's combat changes.

Mod 20's combat changes saw a general ~30% increase to base damage and tweaking the Action Point gain formula to give you a daily every 45 seconds.

nevertwi said:

Halfling has a niche and funny side benefit: their small hitbox causes some mechanics to miss you, such as the IC Boss 3's lasers.

This confuses me: Devs said that every toon has the same hitbox and thus this should not happen. Do you mean that you take no damage at IC third Boss on laser no matter where you stand?

You're in the same alliance as Sume.
In on IC run he was tanking in Mod 19, he humorously showcased the Halfling Haxbox by just standing still during the lasers attack while taking no damage.

The halfings might have been changed since then.

nevertwi

Finally done with the update to the Vanguard Fighter Guide - Mod 22:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x6ZUmU_I7yGxFk5JVcuY380a_rSD7mOwwVhqyvNgI_M/edit?usp=sharing
Unfortunate timing with Mod 23 being that close ... Feedback as always welcome.

stark760

Very nice guide. Deflect Sev now much easier to get closer to 70-80%(with master boon procing) with new gear set(possibly 7.5% boots add more, not sure if they have cooldown). Crit avoidance is still very difficult to get, no potions, elixir, or event food to bolster. If run the Lich on 1 of 3 possible companion slots for defense, building crit avoidance, means no Bruenor/Regis. Deflect much easier to get, from consumables, to 7.5% deflect comp(Watler) being able to be used on Utility, whereas 7.5% crit avoid will use up a def slot and alter build there drastically, at least for me. Messed with ioun stone of radiance and Cat. Ioun stone nice if trying to balance deflect/awareness/crit avoid rating and get combat balance feat, but deflect sev drops a lot(pretty sure you'd lose Regis deflect sev as well, going all out for max crit avoid). But I lose 23.5% deflect sev and 12.9% deflect(also bonus % from bruenor/regis) to push my crit avoid from 49% standing to 74.5. I know it's part of our forte(crit avoid), but once everything capped, I'd say easier and more flexible to go deflect. This is saying you have most tanking comps at disposal and most gear, etc. Very nice guide, hope you update it for newer gear just out.