Tanks and awareness (CA damage from single boss)

lldt · February 2020

In boss fights with no adds, what are the situations where CA damage is done to you? Hit from behind? Spine toss? It isn't always easy to see where they land, so if you try to stand under boss, I think it could hit you from behind (therefore not blocked and possibly CA damage?)

In terms of order of importance for tanks, is it:

1. Defence (capped, most obvious one)
2. Crit Avoidance (capped)
3. HP
4. Awareness (as high as possible without sacrificing HP)
5. Deflection (as high as possible without sacrificing HP)

Does that sound about right? Anyone have specifics on their numbers they can share? Thanks.

lldt · February 2020

Also, what is mod18 max HP? I tried all R15 rads (4 def slot for rings), leg HP mount, all leg prosp/fort, all leg HP companions (32k, 16k x 3, 8k red dragon ioun), HP kits, guild boon (ability points only in STR and DEX). Unbuffed solo, this is just under 900k and a bit over with Caprese food. I've read that some people are at 1m HP, but have not seen it. Just wondering what I'm missing.

Also, in terms of armor enchantment for IC, Elven Battle is best then Shadowclad?

pitshade · February 2020

CA is granted by having hostile mobs on either side of the target or else is forced as part of a power's coding. Facing doesn't play a part.

lldt · February 2020

pitshade said:
CA is granted by having hostile mobs on either side of the target or else is forced as part of a power's coding. Facing doesn't play a part.

Yes, I understand the mechanic of CA. I just thought that would be strange in single boss fights in the post mod 16 game. I mean, it essentially makes Awareness irrelevant for all of the challenging single boss fights.

Thanks for the confirmation though.

nic1985 · February 2020

@lldt All boss fight at end game LoMM, IC, ToMM there are situation when boss can gain CA and you need Awareness. For example last boss of LoMM the scorpions, last boss of IC the mini engines, the iced in ToMM.

For 1M HP, have you considered there are 7x consumable stackable buffs. You want to put ability points in CON for more HP. The Tale of Old trio artifact books give extra HP bonus.

FYI, I’ve seen top tanks with just about 800-900k HP. Regardless you still need an adequate-superb healer.

some1stolemynickname · February 2020

I'd place awareness about = with Crit Avoid. While most bosses it's not needed, you still have to get there. It helps tremendously when dealing with tons of mobs (in addition to what nic1985 stated).

Also don't forget you'll want a good amount of incoming healing %...the more the better.

micheal1979 · February 2020

I ignore awareness completely in all content from malabogs to tomm to tic. That being said I cap everything else as a paladin tank(85k armor pen,defense,deflect,accuracy,crit strike,100k crit avoidance, 59% inc heals, and 750k hp).

oldtimer · February 2020

some1stolemynickname said:
I'd place awareness about = with Crit Avoid. While most bosses it's not needed, you still have to get there. It helps tremendously when dealing with tons of mobs (in addition to what nic1985 stated).

Also don't forget you'll want a good amount of incoming healing %...the more the better.

Crit avoidance is mandatory on support classes, awareness is useless as of this moment on everyone they are not even in the same universe in terms of effectiveness.

Mobs do not get to do CA damage because no one should be getting flanked by mobs,if you are getting flanked that is on you for having terrible positioning especially as the Tank.

nic1985 · February 2020

@oldtimer#7525 It is very situational when a tank need awareness but nonetheless, it is useful to have it.

For example, last boss of LoMM, your team wants to pull all the scorpions, scorpions and boss will surround tank. Tank wants/needs to maintain position with shield up for party CA.

TiC last boss have similar situation with tiny engines that spawn. Sometime you have to stay in position with shield up and being surrounded.

thefabricant · February 2020

nic1985 said:
@oldtimer#7525 It is very situational when a tank need awareness but nonetheless, it is useful to have it.

For example, last boss of LoMM, your team wants to pull all the scorpions, scorpions and boss will surround tank. Tank wants/needs to maintain position with shield up for party CA.

TiC last boss have similar situation with tiny engines that spawn. Sometime you have to stay in position with shield up and being surrounded.

Put on a ring of the charging bull and run in circles. Awareness is the least useful stat in the game.

nic1985 · February 2020

"ring of the charging bull" don't see many tanks slotting this mod-8 ring or even aware of it existence. I have a legendary version of it but don't use it because running around with boss/mobs, I am sure some dps hates that. I want to be an effective tank for the party and that is having capability to face tank boss, surrounded by mobs when the situation arise.

Sure awareness should be the last stats you would want to focus on but after capping all the select Defensive/Offensive stats, it doesn't hurt to raise/cap Awareness . I build my tanks base on Jannenw's Mechanic guide and this statement on Awareness; "Having 0 Awareness and getting hit by an enemy with combat advantage and 24k stat will increase their damage by about ~50%." if that is true (which I assume it is), then I would choose to invest into Awareness.

rjc9000 · February 2020

thefabricant said:

Put on a ring of the charging bull and run in circles. Awareness is the least useful stat in the game.

Wait, so the DR from this ring:

1. actually works?
2. Isn't just extra defense?
3. And goes beyond the 50% cap from Defense?

wilbur626 · February 2020

> @rjc9000 said:
> (Quote)
> Wait, so the DR from this ring:
>
> 1. actually works?
> 2. Isn't just extra defense?
> 3. And goes beyond the 50% cap from Defense?

Charging Bull is +aggro?

thefabricant · February 2020

rjc9000 said:

thefabricant said:

Put on a ring of the charging bull and run in circles. Awareness is the least useful stat in the game.
Wait, so the DR from this ring:

1. actually works?
2. Isn't just extra defense?
3. And goes beyond the 50% cap from Defense?

Its the aggro ring.

thefabricant · February 2020

nic1985 said:
"ring of the charging bull" don't see many tanks slotting this mod-8 ring or even aware of it existence. I have a legendary version of it but don't use it because running around with boss/mobs, I am sure some dps hates that. I want to be an effective tank for the party and that is having capability to face tank boss, surrounded by mobs when the situation arise.

Sure awareness should be the last stats you would want to focus on but after capping all the select Defensive/Offensive stats, it doesn't hurt to raise/cap Awareness . I build my tanks base on Jannenw's Mechanic guide and this statement on Awareness; "Having 0 Awareness and getting hit by an enemy with combat advantage and 24k stat will increase their damage by about ~50%." if that is true (which I assume it is), then I would choose to invest into Awareness.

None of the tanks I play with bother to cap awareness, these are some of the best tanks in the game. Its just a case of positioning yourself so the monsters are not behind you. This is possible even when there are 12 scorpions chasing you in lomm, with a bit of clever footwork.

I would rate defensive stats like this:

HP
Defense
Crit Avoidance
Deflect
Offensive stats
Awareness

(Yes, I rank offensive stats over awareness.)

wilbur626 · February 2020

@thefabricant do you know if the 2nd boss in IC has combat advantage when using his slam/stun attack? That is the one and only fight where I think awareness may be of a little help

thefabricant · February 2020

wilbur626 said:
@thefabricant do you know if the 2nd boss in IC has combat advantage when using his slam/stun attack? That is the one and only fight where I think awareness may be of a little help

I don't, but I know my wizard survives being hit by it and he is definitely not capped on awareness, so if he can survive it, a tank should be able to as well.

micky1p00 · February 2020

nic1985 said:
"ring of the charging bull" don't see many tanks slotting this mod-8 ring or even aware of it existence. I have a legendary version of it but don't use it because running around with boss/mobs, I am sure some dps hates that. I want to be an effective tank for the party and that is having capability to face tank boss, surrounded by mobs when the situation arise.

Sure awareness should be the last stats you would want to focus on but after capping all the select Defensive/Offensive stats, it doesn't hurt to raise/cap Awareness . I build my tanks base on Jannenw's Mechanic guide and this statement on Awareness; "Having 0 Awareness and getting hit by an enemy with combat advantage and 24k stat will increase their damage by about ~50%." if that is true (which I assume it is), then I would choose to invest into Awareness.

I'm 99% sure that sentence was written before the Crit / CA change, and it is not written well.
I guess (and now with my memory I can only guess), the idea is 24k base counter stats + 50k For the Defense, Deflect, Combat Advantage, and Crit stats, gets us to 74k for their CA, which today will be 74% damage increase (if we have 0 awareness), but back then it was together with critical severity which is missing from the sentence so I guess that's why the 50%.

As this stat is equal to positioning (I didn't see any mob that can do forced CA, with CC or other means, though maybe the IC chains? never checked, I'll try to look if someone has a log lying around) it is a QoL of stat, move around to not get CA'd or cap it and just "tank" your way around.

It is also, currently, very cheap to cap stats, as there are usually spare defensive slots to play with unless going into offensive spree.

zimxero · February 2020

IMO from playing a dps tank:

1st - Defense, value = 200% per point
2nd - Health, value = 150% per point
3rd - Deflect, value = 133% per point
4th - Critical Avoid, value = 125% per point
5th - Awareness, value = 120% per point

Those are the priorities. The values are added to show comparisons. 4% awareness is still better than 2% defense for example.
The numbers aren't enough and don't apply to everyone in all situations. For example, in ToMM, Critical Avoid is more important because of the high number of hits a tank will face constantly that approach killing damage. The numbers above are not for ToMM. Note that I rate deflect higher than most do. Why?

A character with 50% defense will take 50% of full damage, on average.
A character with 50% in critical resistance will take 80% of full damage on average.
A character with 50% deflection will take 75% of full damage on average.

This makes deflection a little more effective.

Now Health... most tanks rate health very high. Some newer tanks do not. Health is more important that it may appear statistically. Hidden values of health are:

1) higher spike damage absorption.
2) "HEALING STONES" Healing stones heal 100% of your health. The more health you have, the better healing you have.
3) High health boosts numerous damage procs such as Chitters headgear and Tanner's Leather Ring. For a tank.. Tanner's Leather ring should be an automatic equip, so you can deal half your health in damage every Daily you fire.
4) some damage ignores defenses.

A final obervation: - As you are downscaled, the positive stats lose effectiveness, but the negative stats are more downscale-proof. If you have excess stats, put them into positive stats, so that they stay maxed out as you downscale.

POSITIVE: Critical Strike, Combat Advantage, Defense, Deflect
NEGATIVE: Critical Resist, Awareness, Armor Penetration, Accuracy

lldt · February 2020

nic1985 said:
All boss fight at end game LoMM, IC, ToMM there are situation when boss can gain CA and you need Awareness. For example last boss of LoMM the scorpions, last boss of IC the mini engines, the iced in ToMM.

Yes, I know. I was just curious whether there were any non-flanking situations that are applicable in PVE that the devs may have added to make this stat more relevant. As of now, people usually eliminated portals for 1st IC boss, so it just leaves 3rd boss and the small engines only spawn occasionally for last half of fight.

nic1985 said:
For 1M HP, have you considered there are 7x consumable stackable buffs. You want to put ability points in CON for more HP. The Tale of Old trio artifact books give extra HP bonus.

FYI, I’ve seen top tanks with just about 800-900k HP. Regardless you still need an adequate-superb healer.

Hmm, I thought only 1 regular food and 1 stronghold food have much impact on HP. I don't think there is another consumable that affects HP much at all. In any case, I haven't seen 1m either. Just read somewhere. Highest I've seen is around 920k. Yes, I've included Tales artifacts (just forgot in my original msg). The set bonus is a significant boost.

lldt · February 2020

micheal1979 said:
59% inc heals, and 750k hp).

So +15% guild boon instead of HP? Hmm, I should give that a try.

finmakin · February 2020

thefabricant said:

nic1985 said:
"ring of the charging bull" don't see many tanks slotting this mod-8 ring or even aware of it existence. I have a legendary version of it but don't use it because running around with boss/mobs, I am sure some dps hates that. I want to be an effective tank for the party and that is having capability to face tank boss, surrounded by mobs when the situation arise.

Sure awareness should be the last stats you would want to focus on but after capping all the select Defensive/Offensive stats, it doesn't hurt to raise/cap Awareness . I build my tanks base on Jannenw's Mechanic guide and this statement on Awareness; "Having 0 Awareness and getting hit by an enemy with combat advantage and 24k stat will increase their damage by about ~50%." if that is true (which I assume it is), then I would choose to invest into Awareness.
None of the tanks I play with bother to cap awareness, these are some of the best tanks in the game. Its just a case of positioning yourself so the monsters are not behind you. This is possible even when there are 12 scorpions chasing you in lomm, with a bit of clever footwork.

I would rate defensive stats like this:
HP
Defense
Crit Avoidance
Deflect
Offensive stats
Awareness
(Yes, I rank offensive stats over awareness.)

I agree with this statement, I never have any issues and always try to do a full pull on endboss.
Its all about positioning (while keeping a eye on group) and good movement, sometimes when I group with lower DPS players I manage to collect all butterfly golems at 1th boss and even keep aggro on boss..
In other dungeons I use sometimes walls in my back to keep mobs in front (and side).

Somehow I really love the trash mobs in IC, but im a weirdo

finmakin · February 2020

lldt said:

micheal1979 said:
59% inc heals, and 750k hp).
So +15% guild boon instead of HP? Hmm, I should give that a try.

It's not always needed to use the guild boon, what I do is (before entering) having a short chat with healer and decide then of using that boon or not.
Most healers are quite capable to heal massive amounts of HP (with right setups)...

Hence, I even know a healer who gets nuts if I have HP stones slotted and sees it as a form of offense

lldt · February 2020

finmakin said:

Hence, I even know a healer who gets nuts if I have HP stones slotted and sees it as a form of offense

Now that's a healer that tanks love!

Tanks and awareness (CA damage from single boss)

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