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Distinguished Gear is Actually Kinda Really Bad And Here is Why (Informative Numbers Post \o/ )
lezard21
Posts: 1,510 Arc User
So recently I've been messing around with my Bestial DPS toon trying to make him into a dual passive build. Dual passive builds are a bit tricky since they require either sacrificing a bit of DPS in order to gain resilience, or keep the DPS but end up being a wet paper towel in a Michael Bay movie universe.
I had to decide which gear to get for my Tank role though.
As a general rule the endgame gear we currently have is separated into Justice (DPS), Distinguished (Tanks) and Virtuous (Healer).
Some players recently found out that Virtuous can actually be a good alternative to the RNG grindfest of Justice for DPS. Justice will still edge forward as the better DPS set thanks to the extra offense and higher set bonus to super stats, while Virtuous will be a bit tankier due to the set bonus to damage resistance.
All fine and dandy till this point.
HOWEVER
Upon running some tests on different build setups, I found out that, for Tanking purposes, Virtuous heavily overperformed Distinguished in every scenario.
The results were as follow:
Test 1
Test 2
Both tests used identically modded gear (for the DPS column it was Justice in DPS role since I was testing a dual passive build), and identical specs (Str/Brawler/Vindicator) with the only difference being that test 1 allocated 3 Overpower/2 Brutality in Str specs, and test 2 allocated 2 Overpower/2 Juggernaut/1 Brutality.
The tl;dr version of this is as follows. In both cases Virtuous and Distinguished acquired the same defense bonus, however Distinguished ended up losing half the crit chance and lost some severity (whereas Virtuous ended up gaining severity).
In the past Distinguished might have yielded better defensive results due to the Wardicator loop, but after it's removal this is no longer the case and Virtuous offers the same or almost the same defense amount with a lot less penalties to your offensiveness, which is important for a Tank since damage is ligated to threat generation. Not to mention that Virtuous Primary Defense offers more resistance to Crowd Control and Knocks than Distinguished does.
My suggestion would be to buff the Defense bonus the Distinguished set gives by a substantial amount (between a 10-20% more bonus to defense, which would require a bonus of 80-120 defense), or add threat generation as a set bonus.
I had to decide which gear to get for my Tank role though.
As a general rule the endgame gear we currently have is separated into Justice (DPS), Distinguished (Tanks) and Virtuous (Healer).
Some players recently found out that Virtuous can actually be a good alternative to the RNG grindfest of Justice for DPS. Justice will still edge forward as the better DPS set thanks to the extra offense and higher set bonus to super stats, while Virtuous will be a bit tankier due to the set bonus to damage resistance.
All fine and dandy till this point.
HOWEVER
Upon running some tests on different build setups, I found out that, for Tanking purposes, Virtuous heavily overperformed Distinguished in every scenario.
The results were as follow:
Test 1
Test 2
Both tests used identically modded gear (for the DPS column it was Justice in DPS role since I was testing a dual passive build), and identical specs (Str/Brawler/Vindicator) with the only difference being that test 1 allocated 3 Overpower/2 Brutality in Str specs, and test 2 allocated 2 Overpower/2 Juggernaut/1 Brutality.
The tl;dr version of this is as follows. In both cases Virtuous and Distinguished acquired the same defense bonus, however Distinguished ended up losing half the crit chance and lost some severity (whereas Virtuous ended up gaining severity).
In the past Distinguished might have yielded better defensive results due to the Wardicator loop, but after it's removal this is no longer the case and Virtuous offers the same or almost the same defense amount with a lot less penalties to your offensiveness, which is important for a Tank since damage is ligated to threat generation. Not to mention that Virtuous Primary Defense offers more resistance to Crowd Control and Knocks than Distinguished does.
My suggestion would be to buff the Defense bonus the Distinguished set gives by a substantial amount (between a 10-20% more bonus to defense, which would require a bonus of 80-120 defense), or add threat generation as a set bonus.
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Comments
PS - why did you bother doing a test without Juggernaut. Is that meant to be relevant to tanking in some way? o3o
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
It's the way I did the tests for my dual passive build o3o you should post the results of your test for your build
Distinguished Gear gives the following defense bonus: 21, 21, 21, 42 set bonus. Total defense of 105. Total of 26% Damage resistance
Virtuous Gear gives the following defense bonus: 21, 42, 21, 10% damage resistance bonus (equivalent to 40 defense). Total defense of 124. Total of 31% Damage resistance.
If you were to consider a Wardicator set, Distinguished would give you a total of 162 Defense (considering Fortified Gear and the Offense return from Modified Gear+ Aggresive Stance) which translates to 40% Damage reduction.
Virtuous would give you a total defense of 149, which translates to 37% Damage reduction.
In the past with Wardicator looping on itself this difference was probably higher than just a 3% damage resistance difference, but right now Virtuous is offering almost identical damage resistance while offering a huge boost to crit chance and crit severity vs the 7% damage bonus that Distinguished's Offense provides.
And this is only considering a Wardicator set, for any other Tanking build Distinguished falls heavily behind.
My test results were that Virtuous mitigated ~1% more damage.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
And I thought Virtuous was only be useful for Healers, squishy dps with self heals for DODGE Tanks
But then the Kaiser Nation attacked, and wardicator loops changed.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
But seriously this is disappointing
And, just to make sure I'm clear, Justice is still the best for DPS, or no?
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Used to be coach on the forums. Still @coach in game.
Yes, Justice still best for dps. I think justic still makes for decent tanking gear, not sure really.
In a Wardicator setup with no other stat mods slotted:
Justice: 144 Defense (36%) 176 Offense, Crit Chance, Crit Severity
Distinguished: 162 Defense (40%), 133 Offense, No Crit Chance, No Crit Severity
Virtuous: 109 defense (27%) + 10% Damage Resistance Bonus, No Offense, Crit Chance, Crit Severity
From raw number comparison Virtuous would be 3% less mitigation than Distinguished, but Foxi's test yielded that Virtuous is mitigating an additional 1% vs Distinguished, so that Damage Resistance from set bonus is either applying more resistance than stated or might be applied in a different layer.
But in any case both Justice and Virtuous apparently offer 3-4% less damage resistance than Distinguished while offering a better damage bonus thanks to the crit chance and crit severity. Justice being comparable to the other 2 sets can be somewhat justified due to the RNGness of Rampage token drops, but Distinguished even falls behind to Virtuous as a tanking set.
For DPS either Justice or Virtuous work well. The only advantage Justice gets over Virtuous is 5-6% damage bonus from Offense.
Distinguished used to be good for tanking due to the Wardicator loop, but once the loop was fixed...well, you can see the results.
all the 3 sets sucks. My TK-lancers barely got ANY increase in overall dps or Lance-crits when going from Merc to full justice.
The set-bonuses are appaling and should be severely increased. The sets also needs a serious overhaul to suit their varrying fields .
Virtuous works as intended, great healing bonuses - No fix needed.
Justice - needs some serious boost to its set-bonuses..
Distinguished - Horribly broken defense.. The defense on the Heroic Chestpiece is higher than the distinguished, yet the distinguished costs ALOT more. I would inrease the defense of each piece and increase the overall setbonuses.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
There actually isn't much of a defensive issue. It's a 1% difference. I'm not too worried about that part.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
It's actually Virtuous gear that is nice for having higher damage mitigation o3o/
I'd actually like it if it wasn't the "go to" set, but just another viable choice. I like the idea of Distinguished being the set you go to if you want steady Offense-based damage, and Virtuous is the one you go to if you want rng damage. The only thing that needs to happen then is that they balance that out between the two of them.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Well if the 38 crowd control resistance is the problem get rid of it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
- Justice Fitness: 42 defense, 553 hp. Measured in r9 mods, this is Impact x2, Growth x0.75 (2.75 mods)
- Distinguished Freedom: 21 defense, 369 hp, knock/repel 70%, cc resist 38. Measured in r9 mods, this is Impact x1, Growth x0.5, CC resist x0.75, and something unknown for knock/repel resist; total value 2.25 + K/R (70%)
- Virtuous Freedom: 42 defense, 369 hp, k/r 100%. Measured in r9 mods, this is Impact x2, Growth x0.5; total value 2.5 + K/R (100%)
Virtuous actually looks bugged. if we assume a value of 0.5 for the 70% K/R (making distinguished equal to Justice), the Virtuous gear has a value of 3.2. If we measure in R9 cores, the distinguished has a value of 3.03 and the Virtuous 3.61.Checking primary offense:
Basic problem with all this is that Offense and CC resistance are not highly valued.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
It would be nice to see these dumped and swapped to +HP and +KR. Either that, or turn the CC bonus up to something relevant, like +1000.
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Used to be coach on the forums. Still @coach in game.
Virtuous outperforms Distinguished in every scenario except the scenario in which the tank is blocking.
Virtuous
[15:46] [Combat (Self)] You lose 423 (1500) Fire Damage from Blue Beam.
[15:46] [Combat (Self)] You lose 99 (1500) Fire Damage from Blue Beam
Distinguished
[17:38] [Combat (Self)] You lose 446 (1500) Fire Damage from Blue Beam.
[17:38] [Combat (Self)] You lose 97 (1500) Fire Damage from Blue Beam.
EDIT: 2 hour gap between tests because PTS went down for maintenance halfway through my test :^)
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Virtuous
(100/332) * (100/110) * 1500 = 410
(100/332) * (100/470) * 1500 = 96.1291
126% ADR from Defiance
106% ADR from Defense
360% ADR from Block
10% ADR from Set Bonus
Distinguished
(100/340) * 1500 = 441
(100/340) * (100/460) * 1500 = 95.9079
126% ADR from Defiance
114% ADR from Defense
360% ADR from Block
The gap is only 0.2 points instead of 2 points because, again, I did not factor in diminishing returns. The diminishing returns in the 300%+ ADR range makes the 10% you get from the set bonus become more like 3%. So if you calculate it like that, you start to see the numbers matching up.
(100/332) * (100/463) * 1500 = 97.5825
So...
Not blocking:
Virtous: 28% damage taken
Dist: 29% damage taken
Blocking:
Virtous: 6.6% damage taken
Distinguished: 6.4% damage taken
So...
Distinguished pros:
0.2% better mitigation while blocking.
Energy proc on attacks.
More offense from The Best Defense.
Virtuous pros:
1% better mitigation while not blocking
1% better dps
Healing bonus
Energy proc on healing
Not sure if balanced u3u
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
That is the traditional belief. Optimally, the sets are chosen like this instead: Justice (Tank/DPS/Healer), Distinguished + Justice Offense(DPS with energy issues), Virtuous (Tank/PvP), and Distinguished(Behemoth AT/Rampages are boring/Lazy).
Too tired to explain it. Distinguished just fell into being a niche set with no particular purpose. Rebalancing that would require changes to all of the equipment sets.
Guardicator nerf made offense/defense less important. Distinguished set is completely dependent on offense/defense.
They definitely need to add offense or crit as a choice in each combination.
So, given a Best Defense build, does the additional offense outweigh the 1% bonus?
Again, seems like for regular attack tanks, Distinguished wins out again. For heal tanks, Virtuous. Maybe we'll start seeing more heal tanks after this.
SIGNATURE:
Used to be coach on the forums. Still @coach in game.
I was wondering that too. Testing to follow.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Even with Guardian + Warden taking big advantage of that defense bonus, Distinguished still doesn't outdo Virtuous in terms of DPS. In fact, only the Garden setup gave Distinguished better DPS than Mercenary, while with every other setup Distinguished was lagging behind every other set ( of course Distinguished can still slot 1 more threat mod than Merc so it's not actually lagging behind ).
So Then I went ahead and did some mitigation testing. Same gear as above with Defiance, using a R3 block replacer, Guardian+Warden specs.
So going by this it's actually a bit more than the 1% better mitigation while not blocking, and while blocking Virtuous and Distinguished are functionally the same.
So seeing as Distinguished appears to be in 2nd place( barely ) in regards to mitigation and 3rd place when it comes to DPS, we can go ahead and shrink Distinguished's pro list down to:
Distinguished pros:
Energy proc on attacks.
Some +crowd control stats that don't matter.
Which means that currently Distinguished is for builds that are having energy issues, and that benefit can be acquired by simply equipping the Utility primary. For builds that spam a lot of heals on themselves, Virtuous Utility primary will of course likely be better.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Awesome info, Spinny!
SIGNATURE:
Used to be coach on the forums. Still @coach in game.
SIGNATURE:
Used to be coach on the forums. Still @coach in game.
The question is, can those stats be cranked high enough that people will actually care to farm for the results? I get the feeling the question will basically be "Does Distinguished make me damn near immune to holds and knocks, or do I still have to block?".
My super cool CC build and how to use it.