Daal

I would respond but I'm afraid you'd get pissy again.

__________________
Daal - 80 Guardian - Vox - Retired
Daalilama - 80 Templar - Vox - Retired
Whysperinmyst - 80 Illusionist - Vox - Retired
Daal - 80 Guardian - Nagafen
Daalilama - 80 Templar - Nagafen
Daalie- 80 Dirge - Nagafen
Panthur - 59 Ranger - Nagafen

Atavax

if you cant tell the difference between your first post and salle's then please dont respond.

salle

Ok first I'll quickly explain the avoidance checks. we have a few things that gives us an avoidance check, shield has protection which gives us the base "block%" which you can see in your persona. this is one check and it's usualy quite high in comparison to the other ones you have. You can have gear or adornments which have further uncontested checks plus the contested checks. All these different checks will be calculated serialy rather than adding them into one big check, which makes them deminishing. Lets say you have 20% block chance from your shield, then you have 3% block from shoulders from PR that extra 3% is a 3% chance true enough but you don't add the chanses up so you have a total of 23% no you take out 20% (the previous total) of the 3% so it becomes 2.4% before you add them together for a total of 22.4%. so the next check you add will be deminished with 22.4%, at 50% it's deminished by 50% at 90% it's deminished by 90%. This is just how it is with adding chances, and you can't ever reach 100%. So by saying its less deminishing it only matters when you don't have any other checks. But as soon as you do it loses it's importance.

No, combat art damage increase only the damage of your CAs not boosting taunts or debuffs or buffs or anything.

Nope, not even the dragoon's reflexes (agi AA end line ability) stops the auto attack swings IIRC. (not saying it's worth having, mind you)

The defense skill only adds to the base avoidance check, this is contested which means it's calculated against the mobs weapon skill, the same with parry skill, this is why we call them contested avoidance, because the devs can give mobs quite outlandish skill levels when they want to make them hard.

You don't disrupt your auto attack as much as delay it and you delay it if you're casting anything, buff, ca, item basically as long as it's got a cast bar it can delay your auto attack swing. Of course if you're too far away you miss auto attack swings and also most controll spells makes you miss out on auto attack swings.
So just learn to cast right after a swing, then if your delay allows it cast again quickly, then wait for the auto attack, and do over.

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"The ultimate lack of self-preservation is probably to call the tank a chicken." - Ravengash

Tumor73

Salle gret job at explaining the mechanics.

Biggest thing I can add is, once you reach marginal returns in the defense, parry, and block, I would really suggest you swap out equipment and try out diferent set ups in regards to raising your DA and MC without losing too much avoidance and mitigation.

I sit around 78% avoidance in a raid, and 7.5K mitigation. I have learned that in ranking my guardians priorities holding agro is tied with survivability. Therefore due to SOE mechanics basing agro off of DPS, you really have to increase MC and DA to the max.

I sit at 71 MC and 51 DA self buffed. My DA sucks, and my DPS takes a huge hit, every chance I get to upgrade a picece of equipment with a nice DA increase without losing a huge amount of avoidance and mitigation I take it.

It has gotten to the point where the SK in the raid is the MT on trash, he can DPS 9K and he has great survivability. If the named fight does not have adds, he is the MT for that too. There is no way I can hold agro off of him, but more importantly, there is no way that a DPS class can rip agro off of the MT.

Until SOE decides what they want to do with class balance, I have changed my schoold of thought on how I spend DKP on raids. DPS gear is now optimal.

It has gotten to the point where I feel the raid would be better off with two SK tanks. Bloodletter is awesome, and their snap agro is huge. ya they dont have the stoneskin, but their death march, Death touch, mythical, and their reinforcement is incredible.

I just hope that Sony revisits fighter class balance soon.

salle

Well I was mostly giving advice for a legendary tank...

Well have you tried using things like Jewel of Animosity, dual wielding in addition to tanking in offstance? if it's trash the healers can keep me up with that, I might have to switch back a shield now and again but rare that I die from it. Usualy a mobs dps goes down 5 to 10 seconds into a fight due to debuffs so use a shield or defensive buffs to get you through that part then concentrate on doing loads of damage and letting the healers take care of your hp.

and I dunnu, I don't think an SK is better than a guard... atleast I wouldn't switch to an SK. guards have alot of abilities and utility that SKs don't have, our ability to give another fighter agro is quite handy in fights like maestro, xebnok and a few others. All our defensive abilities + being able to be good and pick up marr's 10 hit/20 second stoneskin mirracle the bigger amount of rescues and snap aggro tools means we're quite handy in fights where the mob memwhipes alot.

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"The ultimate lack of self-preservation is probably to call the tank a chicken." - Ravengash

Atavax

thx for more helpful information. one or two more questions.

DA gives another chance to hit the enemy, which is another chance to crit. so every time you double attack, your chance to crit is doubled. so wouldnt DA be the thing to stack for hate until its capped? 100% da would increase the number of crits you do by 100%. 50% da would increase the number of crits you do by 50% ect. and then not only does say 5% da increase melee crit by 5%, it also increases your melee strikes's hits by 5%. haste would do something similar, increasing the amount of melee attacks you do which increase the amounts of crits and da's you do. seems like crit cant compete with da and haste for threat gain.

Wulfghar

First, let me answer your immediate question. If you were only auto attacking, your theory would be sound. The reason why crit is better than double attack is this: Crit effects combat arts as well as melee attacks. So not only does your auto attack critical, but so do your dots and big hitters.

Secondly, having played a tank in this game for 5 years, I can honestly say that noone can tell you what you need for what situations. Basic guidelines are available, but it depends highly on what type of players you surround yourself with and what they are capable of. In my honest opinion, there is no better way than to go out and get your hands dirty, so to speak. You will learn how many mobs equal a wipe, how much your healers can cope with, which fights are easy, average, or hard. Salle has covered the basics better than I can, so thats the best I can offer atm.

I don't know the mechanics of shield effectiveness (besides the fact that it stacks), or how exactly shield block got nerfed. My crit sits around 90 and da around 85 or so w/o my Jewel proc'd (raid buffed), and when dual-wielding, i can put out 8-10k pretty consistently. I know what Tumor is referring to though. I wouldn't say that SK's in general are overpowered, but you can bet your ass that Grave Sacrament is OP. Reinforcement should be brought in line to rival it, and guards would feel alot better imo. Let the dps classes deal with the ping-pong O.o

Atavax

im not looking to be told how to tank, i just need to know how the stats effect our mechanics so i can make educated decisions on stats. i think i've been doing a good job, seems like alot of people that i've tanked for in the past as asking me to tank their groups, but im not sure the healers just arent bored and want a challenge in keeping a newly 80 guardian up in veks 2.

Wulfghar

What other stats are in question?

Atavax

ummm, is vs magic good against all non-physical damage or do i need to keep specifically vs heat and vs mental and vs other sets? and does mitigation only mitigate against physical damage? does any/all avoidance stats work on non-physical damage?

also what avoidance stats doe agi increase? same thing as defense? or parry, block, deflection?