Nightmare Tide Tank Spreadsheet, T2 edition

[Muspel]

So, I updated my tanking spreadsheet with the T2 gearsets. It can be found here.

A few things to note:

• The spreadsheet now uses the T2 guard formula, but only on the T2 raid gear sheet. The T1 gear sheet still uses the old formula.
• The tanks seem to be scaling at pretty much identical rates, fortunately. The change in the gaps between the classes are tiny enough that they're almost certainly explained by the variances in gearsets.
• I also added a new sheet, which is the T2 gearset, except with normalized guard values (essentially, I just set everyone to 10% Guard mitigation). This gives a somewhat more even comparison, since it gets rid of the large inconsistencies caused by slight differences in the test gearsets. It's still not a perfect measuring stick, though.
• In the course of adding the T2 set, I realized that when I put together my T1 mage tank gear set, I forgot to put an endurance rune on the wand. This has been corrected, but it didn't have a significant effect on the T1 calcs since it was only 85 endurance.
• As always, it's possible that I made a mistake somewhere. If anyone sees something that looks off, please let me know.

[Xentex]

Snap posted very similar #'s in another thread, but my calculations come out:

Guard % = max (0, [guard - 2852.4] * 0.01903 ) up to 10% cap at 3378.

Past the 3378 cap the scaling looked like 0.0035 or so, but I didn't mess with it much. May be non-linear after that and I didn't have anymore guard gear.

[Lethaemis]

Snap posted very similar #'s in another thread, but my calculations come out:

Guard % = max (0, [guard - 2852.4] * 0.01903 ) up to 10% cap at 3378.

Past the 3378 cap the scaling looked like 0.0035 or so, but I didn't mess with it much. May be non-linear after that and I didn't have anymore guard gear.

This is correct. You don't start gaining T2 guard until ~2852. Soft cap is 3378, and the hard cap is 3904. For some reason you hit hard cap for T2 guard before T1 guard. I have no idea why it is set up this way.

[Muspel]

Snap posted very similar #'s in another thread, but my calculations come out:

Guard % = max (0, [guard - 2852.4] * 0.01903 ) up to 10% cap at 3378.

Past the 3378 cap the scaling looked like 0.0035 or so, but I didn't mess with it much. May be non-linear after that and I didn't have anymore guard gear.

After a bit of math, what appears to happen is the following:

T2 Guard mitigation = (Guard mitigation - 2852.4) * 0.00004222654269 * 450

The 0.00004222654269 is, of course, the amount of mitigation that you normally get from Guard, so in this case it's subtracting a flat amount from your Guard, then increasing the effectiveness of leftover guard by a factor of 450.

Presumably, the effectiveness will drop by exactly 80% past the 10% mitigation softcap, just like it does now. I'll ask Vladd about it on Monday and see if I can get a confirmation on it before putting it into the spreadsheet.

Why they didn't just make a DR formula is beyond me.

Something like:

Guard mitigation=(.2 * Guard Rating)/(Guard Rating + 3000)

This would correct a large number of problems with Guard. Right now, every single point is worth more than the point before it, except for the point that puts you over the softcap and any points past the hardcap, because it adds a flat amount of mitigation per point instead of diminishing in value like armor and resistance.

By using a DR formula, every point is equally valuable. The above example formula results in nearly identical mitigation values at the current softcaps and hardcaps, but scales in a sane way. People would probably end up at somewhere between 13% and 16% mitigation by the end of the Nightmare Tide, depending on how much Guard we have in the last tier, and it would save the designers the work of needing to make these weird anti-guard mechanics for specific instances and work out new formulas each tier.

[Xentex]

Right now, every single point is worth more than the point before it, except for the point that puts you over the softcap and any points past the hardcap, because it adds a flat amount of mitigation per point instead of diminishing in value like armor and resistance.

I assume you mean this as in a 1% reduction when you're taking 50% damage is worth more than a 1% reduction when you're taking 75%?

If that's what you mean I suppose it makes sense. I don't know how big a deal it is, though, since I don't tank progression so by the time I get around to tanking anything it's pretty much easy-time farming anyway.

My experience in real-world information systems is you get stuff like this embedded in the code, a bunch of band aid solutions get built around it, and then it becomes hard to "correct" because you'd have to go back and adjust all those band aids if you tried to fix it. So you put spit and chewing gum on top of spit and chewing gum. (Physical structures tend to work like this too. All kinds of modifications required to address what would have been done differently the first time with the gift of hindsight.)

[Muspel]

I assume you mean this as in a 1% reduction when you're taking 50% damage is worth more than a 1% reduction when you're taking 75%?

Correct.

My experience in real-world information systems is you get stuff like this embedded in the code, a bunch of band aid solutions get built around it, and then it becomes hard to "correct" because you'd have to go back and adjust all those band aids if you tried to fix it. So you put spit and chewing gum on top of spit and chewing gum. (Physical structures tend to work like this too. All kinds of modifications required to address what would have been done differently the first time with the gift of hindsight.)

My hope is that it would be relatively easy to retrofit a DR formula onto Guard. The fact that there already stats that function in exactly this way (armor and resistance) might mean that it would be much easier to implement.

The T2 anti-guard mechanic is incredibly clunky. Guard grants less mitigation than it does in T1... until you reach a certain amount, at which point it begins to grant more, reaching the T2 hardcap at a lower value than the T1 hardcap. And presumably, if/when T3 is released, we'd see another iteration of this.

It's such a confusing and terrible mechanic that I had to triple-check the numbers you posted before I believed it, because it didn't make any sense. This isn't even a solution to any of the problems that it was apparently trying to address, since people will just cap Guard even faster in T2 than they did in T1.

[Muspel]

So, after talking with Vladd, here's what I've been able to come up with for the T2 guard formula. It's not perfect, but it should be significantly more accurate.

%mitigation = (rating * .000188932806) - .53859288428

If anyone can find a guard rating value where the T2 mitigation on the tooltip is off by more than .02% from what this formula gives you, please let me know-- otherwise, I'm calling that close enough for purposes of the spreadsheet.

The softcap is at 3380, and the hardcap is at 3910.

I'll update it into the spreadsheet in a few days if nobody finds any glaring problems with that formula.

[Muspel]

Okay, I've updated the spreadsheet with the T2 Guard formula (but only for the T2 sheet, I'm leaving the T1 sheet as it is for obvious reasons).

Unfortunately, because the callings have different amounts of Guard on their test gear, there are some pretty large discrepancies between EH and required healing that aren't indicative of the strengths or weaknesses of the specs themselves.

For instance, while warriors have noticeably higher EH than any other tank, it's not as extreme as the spreadsheet makes it seem-- their test gear gives them 3-4% more mitigation from Guard than the other callings, which skews the results significantly. Conversely, the mage test gear has very little Guard, so you see the opposite problem.

[Lethaemis]

The softcap is at 3380, and the hardcap is at 3910.

The softcap is 3378. I wish I had a screenshot, but I had 3378 which was exactly 10.00%.

[Muspel]

The softcap is 3378. I wish I had a screenshot, but I had 3378 which was exactly 10.00%.

Vladd said that the softcap is at 3380. No offense, but I trust him over you. (Although it's certainly possible that there's a bug or a rounding error in the formula that the game is using.)

[cataria]

would be rly nice if the test gear results in exact same guard numbers between tanks.

suggestion: make a 3rd tab with tier 2 but put guard at 10 percent or 12 percent (worth aiming for)

so we see the actual difference between the specs.

[Muspel]

would be rly nice if the test gear results in exact same guard numbers between tanks.

suggestion: make a 3rd tab with tier 2 but put guard at 10 percent or 12 percent (worth aiming for)

so we see the actual difference between the specs.

Done. (This is actually really, really easy to do-- you just replace the Guard row with .1, instead of the existing formula. Took like 15 seconds.)

Bear in mind, though, that there are still some minor differences between the amount of endurance between the test gear sets.

This also ignores the fact that clerics and mages innately have very slightly higher Guard than rogues or warriors, due to their talents that give them 10% extra wisdom and intelligence, respectively.

Still, it's a much more even comparison than the standard test gear.

[Lethaemis]

Vladd said that the softcap is at 3380. No offense, but I trust him over you. (Although it's certainly possible that there's a bug or a rounding error in the formula that the game is using.)

If the cap is 3380, there is a rounding error. Nothing major though.

3376 Guard
3377 Guard
3378 Guard
3379 Guard
3380 Guard

Edit: Added 3376 and 3377 Guard