Suggestion for deflect (PvE & PvP balance)

[Kerosive]

I am currently at work so doing this from my phone. Please excuse grammatical or spelling errors.

As it stands we all know that deflect, while a great start, is simply not at the point it needs to be. I have concluded that a large portion of this is due balancing needs. That being said here is my suggestion that I believe will accomplish the goal of making deflect viable while not over powered for PvP.

Make deflect 0.5 per point of dex instead of 1 for 1

Move planar switch to a 31 point root ability.

Add Planar Reaction (or whatever you wish to name it) in its stead
Planar Reaction - New talent available after 30 points in Riftstalker "Increases deflect rating by 0.1 per point of dex and an additional 0.1 for each point spent in Riftstalker past 31"

Just a simple idea I hope will be considered.

[Adastra]

So if I'm understanding this correctly, a full 51 Riftstalker would get 2.5 deflect per dex. While it would greatly improve deflection for pure tank gear RS, I think this would make people look into using dps gear at a cost of hp after hitting the toughness caps in order to min/max EHP. Crossing over to dps gear as a tank shouldn't really happen regardless of which calling is tanking. They really need to start making deflection as an actual stat bonus on tank gear. Convert +parry on tank gear to +deflect for all I care, it would actually be a better use then. :P

[Kerosive]

So if I'm understanding this correctly, a full 51 Riftstalker would get 2.5 deflect per dex. While it would greatly improve deflection for pure tank gear RS, I think this would make people look into using dps gear at a cost of hp after hitting the toughness caps in order to min/max EHP. Crossing over to dps gear as a tank shouldn't really happen regardless of which calling is tanking. They really need to start making deflection as an actual stat bonus on tank gear. Convert +parry on tank gear to +deflect for all I care, it would actually be a better use then. :P

While I agree with you I think Trion has made it clear they don't want to do that. Plus as it stands right now people are already subbing out tank gear for dps gear because of deflect.

[Adastra]

While I agree with you I think Trion has made it clear they don't want to do that. Plus as it stands right now people are already subbing out tank gear for dps gear because of deflect.

Yeah, I've been doing that for non-raids, since I am mainly dps for our raids. I sometimes tell people that I'm just mix-matching my tank/dps gear for more dodge and such (and now deflection). I am aware Trion does not plan on making +deflect stat for items, but they really need to address our tanking issues a bit more, either by changing their minds and making +deflect stat for items or figuring out some other way. I sometimes feel they don't really see Muffintop's threads about the physical damage disparities. :\

[Phantom Scony]

While I agree with you I think Trion has made it clear they don't want to do that. Plus as it stands right now people are already subbing out tank gear for dps gear because of deflect.

They're doing it wrong. :P

Math suggests losing tank gear in favor of high-dex dps gear hits your health too hard to justify it. Losing 1500 health for 10% Deflect still means an HK Tank eats a full hit 60% of the time.

(This is, of course, directed at Raid Tanking, not the guy above me overgearing content.)

[Adastra]

Yeah, I don't think it would be wise to do that for HK tanking, haha. But if they did implement Kerosive's suggestion that 51 RS would end up at 2.5 deflect per dex, that may possibly be an option. Of course, at the same time, it may not even be needed because current geared rogues in full tank gear would have 1k+ deflect then. :P

[Kerosive]

Yeah, I don't think it would be wise to do that for HK tanking, haha. But if they did implement Kerosive's suggestion that 51 RS would end up at 2.5 deflect per dex, that may possibly be an option. Of course, at the same time, it may not even be needed because current geared rogues in full tank gear would have 1k+ deflect then. :P

Which is my overall hope. This will still have us behind warriors but make the gap much less notable.

[Phantom Scony]

Yeah, I don't think it would be wise to do that for HK tanking, haha. But if they did implement Kerosive's suggestion that 51 RS would end up at 2.5 deflect per dex, that may possibly be an option. Of course, at the same time, it may not even be needed because current geared rogues in full tank gear would have 1k+ deflect then. :P

If we had the mitigation Warriors did, the idea would be grand. But, if we had that, it wouldn't be necessary. Even in HK Tank gear, it's just too risky to lose endurance for deflect by switching to dps gear. Even capped at 60%, RNG can kill us, especially if we traded away our endurance for deflect. Until Deflect is modeled like block (backed up by talent/skill infrastructure), we can't rely on it like a warrior does. Sure, the extra mitigation is a GOOD thing. But as I saw last night in GSB... there's a lot of potential to deflect small boss auto attacks and then just eat the big attacks.

[Gery]

It should just scale with endurance and there would be no problems at all. No itemization work needed and no issue of having to use dps or pvp gear instead of tank gear.

[Phantom Scony]

It should just scale with endurance and there would be no problems at all. No itemization work needed and no issue of having to use dps or pvp gear instead of tank gear.

They've got to have something else in mind for us. Clearly they don't want us capping deflect until the level cap extension. Ok, I can understand that. They're reworking Block for the same reason. Putting it in endurance would make the disparity between a T1 Expert tank and an HK Tank less severe and more fluid.

I can't imagine them thinking this is our big fix. We've already given them numbers proving it isn't anywhere near what we need.

[Adastra]

If we had the mitigation Warriors did, the idea would be grand. But, if we had that, it wouldn't be necessary. Even in HK Tank gear, it's just too risky to lose endurance for deflect by switching to dps gear. Even capped at 60%, RNG can kill us, especially if we traded away our endurance for deflect. Until Deflect is modeled like block (backed up by talent/skill infrastructure), we can't rely on it like a warrior does. Sure, the extra mitigation is a GOOD thing. But as I saw last night in GSB... there's a lot of potential to deflect small boss auto attacks and then just eat the big attacks.

I don't think we have room in our tank tree to fit anything else in there unless some of them are moved to core abilities or just outright replaced. Honestly, I would like to see the dps abilities replaced here and make it a pure tank tree, but at the same time it would destroy some of our dps specs, so they would have to move some of these buffs/abilities over to those trees somewhere. Of course, the easiest way out may actually be to have it so endurance also helps deflect rating, perhaps at a 25-50% rate. So you would have dex giving 100% deflect rating and endurance giving 25-50% which would probably improve that stat by some 300-700 deflect.

Another option is to remove deflect and redo the Shadow Guard to have a higher cap and change the armor per 1% from 400 to 250 or so (just tossing the 250 out of the blue) and have it work with any armor buffs. 8k armor (working with buffs) with 250 per 1% would come out to 32 + 5 reduction (with 5/5 Shadow Guard). Obviously the numbers can be tweaked around at any point, but just tossing out some ideas that may have been brought up, but disappeared under the piles of threads/posts.

[Kerosive]

I think maybe the dex + end method could work

[ShazzamCrucia]

It should just scale with endurance and there would be no problems at all. No itemization work needed and no issue of having to use dps or pvp gear instead of tank gear.

I got flamed by the riftstalker trolls on PTS forums for suggesting this a month ago

the same ones complaining about dex scaling now

I hate you all

[Phantom Scony]

I don't think we have room in our tank tree to fit anything else in there unless some of them are moved to core abilities or just outright replaced. Honestly, I would like to see the dps abilities replaced here and make it a pure tank tree, but at the same time it would destroy some of our dps specs, so they would have to move some of these buffs/abilities over to those trees somewhere. Of course, the easiest way out may actually be to have it so endurance also helps deflect rating, perhaps at a 25-50% rate. So you would have dex giving 100% deflect rating and endurance giving 25-50% which would probably improve that stat by some 300-700 deflect.

Another option is to remove deflect and redo the Shadow Guard to have a higher cap and change the armor per 1% from 400 to 250 or so (just tossing the 250 out of the blue) and have it work with any armor buffs. 8k armor (working with buffs) with 250 per 1% would come out to 32 + 5 reduction (with 5/5 Shadow Guard). Obviously the numbers can be tweaked around at any point, but just tossing out some ideas that may have been brought up, but disappeared under the piles of threads/posts.

A month ago all the builds were <x>-dancer builds because Deadly Dance boosted finishers. Now they made Stalker Phase snappy and people have switched all those builds to <x>-stalker builds.

Riftstalker should not be a tree people go to for DPS gains. It should be about survivability first and movement second.

[Phantom Scony]

I think maybe the dex + end method could work

Part of Trion's problem is they're not pleased with people capping before the "final content pre-level increase". So they're bringing warriors down aplenty blockwise. So what we need is a solution that brings us to a level where deflect is "useful", "content-scaling", and doesn't cap us.

Unless we were to see 80%-90% Deflect chance, Deflect will not fix us. Assuming caps are the same, we can only get to, what, 40% or 60%?

So, we have to take a scale measuring the difference between GSB and HK gear, apply it further by one (or two) tiers, so that in full T4 Raid gear, we're sitting pretty at that cap. This is my best "estimate" of what Trion is attempting to do.

Deflect is just a side dish in the meal that makes Riftstalker a belly-full tank.