Tanking in... Leather?

[Fanfon]

Originally Posted by Tsaka

Real tanks wear cloth.

Real Tanks go naked

[Owyn]

Originally Posted by Goldservice

[snip]

I think you missed the point. The question being asked is, would the extra evade given by leather be worth the loss in physical defense? And largely, I think we're answering "no"; but again, there are probably some special cases where that's not true.

[Raivyn]

Originally Posted by Goldservice

[snip]

Go die nyerking goldseller.

[Chalky]

Please don't quote reply gold spam, geniuses.

[Owyn]

Didn't even see the spam, must have been the sig...? Sorry about that. =(

[Vasilis]

Temp's have a -200 accuracy debuff, that last 12 seconds with a 12 second cool down. So the debuff can be permanent.

Most players using the 42 orange weapon will have an accuracy of 1450~. With the debuff that's 1250.

So you need your evasion to be at 1550 to fully utilize the 30% cap. (1vs1 with the debuff, but we all know it's a group thing in Aion so you might need 1750 evasion).

Comparing items of the same grade & level, the difference between plate & leather in terms of evasion is around 250~. You can get evasion manastones up to +15. If you have good gear, 30 sockets will yield 450 evasion.

The rest you can work out.

But with the OP's question, going evasion build is very plausible.

Evasion dodges 100% of the damage, and interrupts chain's. If you can archive that 30% of the time, you are tank.

Then there's physical defense. I duel'd a glad the same level naked & with full gear on. The difference between 15 physical defense vs 1200 physical defense was 80dmg. Taking into consideration my pvp % reduction gear, it worked out to be around 20def to 1dmg. I think temp's have some passive skill to reduce pvp damage.

But to the OP, spend some kinah and test it out. I've tested going full magical resistance... magical resistance worked out to be 20 magic resis to 1 dmg as well. Lol. Useless.

[Genephyx]

Nice idea OP, but the difference just doesn't cut it for me.
Nice to see not everyone is a generic thinker though.

[Owyn]

Well, did some straight up real world testing today. I'm L33, using a full set of Worthy Strong Leather and comparing it to Worthy Adamantium plate armor.

The difference is basically the loss of 286 defense, and gain of 221 evade.

Vs. 4-dot L33 mobs, I was evading roughly 20% of the time with just shy of 1100 evade (no evade manastones).

Bottom line, I was taking a bit under 50% less damage per combat with the leather - 41.66%, to be exact.
I was also able to tank a L34 elite mob solo in the leather, although I did blow emp armor and my full heal power, AND use two potions to do it. I did not try that in the plate, but from past experience, I feel fairly confident I would have died.

Incidentally, stacked defense skills is VERY strong. I had a bit over 1100 shield, and a bit under 1100 parry and evade. Vs mobs three levels below me, I either evaded, parried, or blocked better than 90% of the time. Against even level mobs, it was a bit lower at roughly 75%. Mobs may vary in accuracy, however, so this might have been a function of the mobs I was fighting. I did try to test against a variety to collect my data (around SE Eltnen).

A side effect of this was slightly decreased block rate - parry and evade together meant less attacks got in to be tested by block. I found myself dropping into shield stance during the short periods between my skill bursts and when the cooldowns expired. This gave me plenty of blocks to trigger the block skills every time they cooled down, but it IS an extra thing to be aware of.

Have not tested greatsword with leather yet. I'm finding myself fond of having the triple-action of the evade/parry/shield defense, but I have a good GS I will test with when I get a chance.

[Owyn]

Update:

Our guild ran a pvp practice last night, alliance on alliance. Partway through, we switched the teams up (one side was winning too much). And this time, I was on the losing side. Last one left vs six same or higher level opponents. Took them about two minutes to take me down.

Yes, I was wearing the leather.

Blunting severe block is a pretty big addition to this template. Effectively, this power adds 200 points to your evade, parry and (if using a shield) block. It's VERY hard to deal serious damage to this character if you're blunted. Makes tanking elites for a group a dream job, too. I was getting a LOT more magic resists in leather than I do in plate (pvp).

I still haven't seen a downside to this move. I haven't stoned the armor yet, but will probably be adding a full +crit spread shortly. I just don't need the +evade; already getting 15-20% evade rate vs oranges, and get a +20% bonus with blunting blow, so why bother? Might go a mix, we'll see.

[Sitar]

This is very interesting, keep up the good work.

How many HP do you loose going from plate to leather ?

[Owyn]

No HP loss. The HP gain from the green "good stuff" level L33 and L38 crafted armor is identical between plate and leather. The difference is some extra magic resist on the L33 plate (enough to create parity with the natural leather resist, roughly) or extra physical def on the L38 plate vs extra evade (L33) or magic resist (L38) on the leather sets.

I'm using this stuff full time for leveling now. Using S&S, if I keep my blunting debuff running on targets, I can solo pretty much nonstop - my health bar barely moves, most fights vs yellows.

[kirua]

Very interesting...

[khariste]

Still waiting to hear more on this. Anyone else try it?

I could also use some clearing up on the pdef skill : Does the dmg scale with specials, or is it just flat dmg reduced? So that if your pdef is 1400, is it straight 140 dmg reduced from all attacks, or is it 140reduced from the base attack.

Ie: If the special move does roughly 1000 dmg, but the auto attack does 200, (so that the special is roughly 5x auto attack), which of the following happens with 1400 pdef:
A). Auto attack - take 60dmg (200-140). Special - take 860 dmg (1000-860).
Or
B). Auto attack - take 60dmg (200-140). Special - take 300dmg (60*5).

I get the feeling it's A, but just wanted to make sure.

[Owyn]

Pretty sure it's A. It is on crits, at least, which seems to say it will be on skills as well.

I'll try to test this. Have not done sufficient real testing against players yet. Done some random pvp, but haven't tested for good numbers.

[khariste]

Haha well, if I'm going to start rolling on fabled leather at raids, I'd like to know. My legion probably wouldn't like it if I didn't have a good reason