Tanking in... Leather?

[ValeKress]

I have used a Triple Layered Defense build roughly for most of my time in Aion. Ever since the block and parry Two Layered defense was figured out by Greatsword build makers, I had to figure out how to make my defense even better than normal. I don't like numbers so I test my builds by feeling. What I CAN say is... the Triple Defense build is very tough to kill.

I first started with Block and Parry.. No HP build at all.. I'm just a person that likes reducing damage more than having more hp. If Block and Parry had caps to how much they can proc (no matter how high of the stat you have) I figured it'd be a good idea to combine the defense stats.. kinda like having a multi-core processor. First testing with dodge and parry were conclusive and roughly half or more than 60% of attacks were dmg reduced. This did indeed mean less shield blocks.

The stats were picky too... If i had like... 50 parry more than my shield defense, shield blocks were greatly lessened. What came to my mind simply was... Shield Block MUST be the Dominant defense stat if you're stacking layers of defense stats. So, In order to increase my parry defense, this required me to increase my shield block stat.

Due to the manastones split between parry and block, This means less "Single-layered" defense. If someone had an accuracy of 1000 and you had a shield defense of 1300 and a parry of 1200, this would cut it pretty close. you'd only have 30% shield dense and 20% parry. BUT! combine those two and you get 50% passive defense. (as long as you're not in a shield stance) If my shield didn't block anything, there would be a chance for my sword to parry the blow. That's two layers of defense my opponent has to go through and it exceeds the cap for a single stat defense.

So yeah, a 50% chance to block OR parry meant 50% less dmg vs a single defense Shield Block with 30 or 40% chance to block or something. If your opponent had even LESS accuracy, then that means increasing your defenses considerably.

Now here comes the part where I integrate Evasion. Despite the effectiveness of two layers, it was either 40-60% dmg reduction. And with people having greatsword builds and figuring out the two layer defense (to some extent), I needed to have more defense. It was a wild idea to think of Evasion since it's definitely odd for a Templar to actually DODGE something yeah? I had the idea after solo grinding mobs while taking advantage of my Blunting Severe Blow. Noticing my templar dodging an attack, I wondered if Evasion could be a third layer of defense.

After spending roughly 500k fiddling with manastones and removing lovely crit stones, I managed to get about 900 evasion, 1200 shield defense, and 1100 parry. (this was at lvl 33) Fighting these mobs again, I had a considerable difference in dmg reduction. CONSIDERABLE.

First layer of defense: Dodge
Second layer of defense: Block
Third layer of defense: Parry

So after punching Blunting severe blow, my targets would miss their attacks. This meant no damage taken and more time for me to dish out damage. If dodge did not work, then block would have a go. If that didn't work, then parry.

By adding this third layer, It does mean less parry and block stones. But, I considered this alright since Blunting Severe Blow gave me the ability to increase my defenses (all of them) by 200 by reducing my target's Accuracy. Thus making the triple layered defense much more effective. So going back to the numbers:

My target has 900 accuracy

-After BsB -before blunting severe blow-
I have 1100 dodge (900)
1300 shield block (1100)
1200 parry (1000)

Add up all of the difference between that and accuracy.

Dodge= 20%
ShieldBl= 40%
Parry= 30%

So came up was..... 80-90% chance for dmg reduction (80% chance if SB was capped at 30%)

Sometimes killing mobs meant no loss in hp (if i did lose any, i'd have gained it back in combat)


Now, there are a few concerns that I have had with this build...

1# Shield blocks are less frequent due to parry and dodge being high stats along with sb. However, Assuming you have blunting severe blow going on, popping a steel wall defense increases Dominance of the shield block stat high enough to block the first or 2nd attack. (more will be explained after concerns)

2#In Pve tanking, it's harder to hold aggro. Why? you gain aggro when your target actually hits you. If that attack is dodged, that means less aggro for you. Not only that, you're already low on dps aggro being a tough triple layered beast. So my suggestion is resorting to Emnity stigma skills.

3# it's rather hard to keep up this build while leveling due to mobs and players that keep getting higher accuracy weapons/ magic acc. You'd have to change armor every few levels just to keep up to par with mobs and players. Best used end game.

4# I was still concerned about defense from Casters such as sorcs. However, I can conclude that Dodge works nicely against those Sorcs. Sometimes in pvp, They'd fire off a CC, but it would be followed by a -Resist-. I know it's not a totally effective way to combat their magic, but it's basically giving you maximum defense against melee and 1 layer of defense against CC's.


And.. yeah that's pretty much most of my concerns regarding the build.

Regarding to 1# and shield block:

I've noticed that when fighting a person/mob, Shield defense is stuck on a chance cap. So if you had shield defense as your only single stat... you'd get a chance of say.. 30%. but you knew that right? so... What happens when you've got Dodge and Parry in there, Is that while you're in a passive mode (not using shield wall), you're most likely going to be dodging or parrying yes? Oddly enough, i found that if i Dodge/Parry several times instead of Block, this basically makes the chance to block nearly 80-100% if i Pop a shield wall defense. In a pvp situation, this would be quite beneficial, as timing your shield attacks is crucial to interrupting or spiking your opponent.

Hrmm. how to say it.... let's say you have a Time Bar this long |-------------------|
In that bar, you have triple defense.
Shield Block has to go off within the certain amount of time in the bar.
But with triple defense, the chance of it going off faster is lessened.

Parry, Dodge, and Block are in a Waiting line.
Dodge and Parry go first and take the first hits.
But if you want to cut in line and block everyone, Use shield wall defense and what COULD have been Dodge and Parry are behind 'Block' assisting the "chance" of block actually blocking.

Hard to explain, i'm not much of a number person lol..

I had a feeling someone would eventually come up with this build idea and you guys have now reached it. As for using leather, that is not really necessary except for the head piece. Depends if you craft blue armor or not.... The damage reduction you get from having high phys defense assists with block and parry (I am not entirely sure if that is true.. but It feels like it). I take it as Dodge being the weakest link of the three. But all three still work together like a triple core processor.

Block= Single Core
Block/Parry= Dual Core
Dodge/Block/Parry= Triple Core
Dodge/Block/Parry + Shield Wall= Intel i7 based triple core with Turboboost focused onto one core (Block)
(there is no i7 triple core)


oh and... I've thought about a 4 layer defense build but that means virtually no dps.

Dodge/Block/Parry AND magic resist stones. Buut..... I'm rather sure that's only good if you're really precise with your combos, interrupts, and being able to keep yourself on the target.

[PostGlas]

I like this thread --
Was just talking about evasion, magic resists, and physical defense with my BG earlier. ^_^

[Phaedryn]

I was a huge fan of avoidance tanking in wow. My Prot Palladin, in my avoidance set, had 73% avoidance (avoidance = miss% + dodge% + parry% only. Blocking is mitigation, not avoidance). I only had one stam gem slotted, and you couldnt pay me to slot more (and my healers would kill you).

However, wow didnt have a cap built in like Aion does. If I could get avoidance numbers well over 50%, maybe I would consider it, but 30% is WAY too low to count on it for anything. Streaks would kill you fast.

This is the probability of a streak of a given length when you only have 30% avoidance.

1 - 70.00%
2 - 49.00%
3 - 34.30%
4 - 24.01%
5 - 16.81%
6 - 11.76%
7 - 8.24%
8 - 5.76%
9 - 4.04%
10 - 2.82%
11 - 1.98%
12 - 1.38%
13 - 0.97%
14 - 0.68%
15 - 0.47%

Comparing that to my old Paladin's streak probability...

1 - 27.000000%
2 - 7.290000%
3 - 1.968300%
4 - 0.531441%
5 - 0.143489%
6 - 0.038742%
7 - 0.010460%
8 - 0.002824%
9 - 0.000763%
10 - 0.000206%
11 - 0.000056%
12 - 0.000015%
13 - 0.000004%
14 - 0.000001%
15 - 0.000000%

You have a better chance of getting an 11 hit streak than I had getting a 3 hit streak...

I will stick with plate and +SD/+HP stones.

[khariste]

Originally Posted by ValeKress

I have used a Triple Layered Defense build roughly for most of my time in Aion. Ever since the block and parry Two Layered defense was figured out by Greatsword build makers, I had to figure out how to make my defense even better than normal. I don't like numbers so I test my builds by feeling. What I CAN say is... the Triple Defense build is very tough to kill.

I first started with Block and Parry.. No HP build at all.. I'm just a person that likes reducing damage more than having more hp. If Block and Parry had caps to how much they can proc (no matter how high of the stat you have) I figured it'd be a good idea to combine the defense stats.. kinda like having a multi-core processor. First testing with dodge and parry were conclusive and roughly half or more than 60% of attacks were dmg reduced. This did indeed mean less shield blocks.

The stats were picky too... If i had like... 50 parry more than my shield defense, shield blocks were greatly lessened. What came to my mind simply was... Shield Block MUST be the Dominant defense stat if you're stacking layers of defense stats. So, In order to increase my parry defense, this required me to increase my shield block stat.

Due to the manastones split between parry and block, This means less "Single-layered" defense. If someone had an accuracy of 1000 and you had a shield defense of 1300 and a parry of 1200, this would cut it pretty close. you'd only have 30% shield dense and 20% parry. BUT! combine those two and you get 50% passive defense. (

I stopped reading here.
You don't understand how probabilities work, and so I doubt the rest of that wall of text is any more accurate.

You don’t combine the percentages, you apply the percentages to the next operation.

20% parry and 30% block combine to a 44% chance to mitigate the damage, not 50%.

[ValeKress]

Hmm you may be correct. However, I did say i'm not a number person so.. it's kind of a feeling of what it's like. Or say a rough estimate. I can confirm however, that it DOES work roughly in accordance to the %'s. So even if it were really a lower % The total chance of reducing damage is still quite around 70% or greater.. at least that's what it FEELS like.

[Owyn]

The point is actually that streaks DON'T kill you.

As I stated above, the difference between L33 high end crafted plate and leather is simple: plate has 286 more phy def, and the leather has 221 more evade. That means the plate user gets hit for 28 less damage every hit, and the leather wearer has a 22% higher evade chance.

From there, the math is simple! 28 damage is 22% of what? 127

If the leather wearing templar is being hit for avg 127 damage per hit, then the bonus to evade is giving roughly the same protection as the physical defense.

But here's the thing: mobs don't DO 127 damage per hit in your 20s. They tend to do twice that - or more. The harder the mob hits, the less valuable physical defense is and the MORE valuable evade becomes. But even more important to this discussion...

...a mob that hits me for 250 in leather would still be hitting me for 222 in plate. Even if I get a bad streak and no evades for a fight, it's not going to make enough of a difference to kill me, *especially* since I have the stacked defenses of evade/parry/block all basically capped. And no manastones spent on them.

[Vasilis]

Alright. I'll be the ultimate test dummy.

I'm getting the entire heavenly god lvl40 abyss leather armor set. I'll let you know how I go. I'll be that noob temp rolling leather gear, with 1700+ evasion.

Btw, with high end weapons & accessories, evasion is USELESS unless you have it at 1700+ for it to be even 20% effective. There's no point going an evasion build if you're not trying to reach it's measly 30% cap - which means full leather gear & +15 evasion manastones.

[Owyn]

I will be REALLY interested in your results. I'm not there yet, so I can't test the 40+ gear yet. Doing what I can.

For info, comparing the L40 abyss gear from plate and leather Archon Centurion sets...
+376 phys def for plate
+182 evade for leather
+47 magic resist for leather
Everything else is the same.

I don't know how that will turn out, to be honest. Depends on how accuracy goes. But that extra phys def means the plate stops 37 more damage per hit than the leather does. So parity would be mobs hitting the leather user for about 370 a hit with a 10% evade rate. At that damage level and evade %, plate and leather are even. Less damage or higher evade rate means the leather is better; more damage per hit or lower evade rate means the plate is better.

Do test without the evade stones first, please... I think the data would be worth having for just the set.

[Vasilis]

Lol, I don't think I'll be able to get the Centurion set's!

I'm just rolling out with the lvl40 blue abyss armor. Equates to the asmo's Devil' gear?

I'm still lvl39, with only 1 piece of the armor (the top) so far (it ate 12 silver medals /cry). So you'll be waiting a while for the results. It's abyss gear so I'm going to have to live with it if it all turns out to ****. Will let you know.

[Owyn]

OK. Well, given that -
Devil plate gives +342 phys def.
Devil's leather gives +162 evade and +47 magic resist.

So the tradeoff is 34 points of damage reduction per hit vs a +16% evade rate.


Edit: Lot of courage going for that. I think I would have stuck with crafted. The good news is, I suspect you are going to find it doesn't suck.

[Adelmarh]

Okay, I've tried a crappy leather evasion set.
I'm 29 templar. I bought a green lvl 26 leather set, and enough +10 evasion manastones to fill it up. It didn't cost me more than 100k ki, and I must say it works pretty fine versus trash mobs.

I can perfect mobs sometimes, meaning they don't deal any damage to me (sometimes only, I repeat), and most of the time, I take some hits, and evade so I can regen my HP before the end of the fight.

The compromise to that isn't that much damage taken, but shield block that decreases by 200~. So my stats become around 1080 Evasion, 1032 Parry, and 967 Block, wich is enough, as mobs accuracy seems to be around 800-850 (can't evade anything with 750~ evasion) (oh, and I haven't Blunting Severe Blow yet, can't wait, maybe it will allow me to socket anything else instead of evasion =p).
Also, I can resist spells, which I couldn't do before. At Mt. Musphel, it's always nice (what am I saying, it's awsome!) to resist a huge nuke, or a powerful poison, quite often btw. And at Mt. Musphel, I prefer by far leather to plate, as mobs are really brutal(s?) : with plate I can't resist, I can't evade, and mobs hurt hard.

With a loss of like 250-350 defense, I can say I take a bit more damage, but I failed to estimate it accurately, as mobs damage is too much random. Overall, I'd say +15/+30 damage taken wearing leather instead of plate. It is not that much when I can evade like 15-20% of the time, and pretty much parrying, blocking (with a +10 green shield, lucky me o/) and resisting like 80% of non evaded attacks ; as often as possible, I have Rage on, so it lasts also more time due to evaded attacks (no damage absorbed by Rage) and mitigated ones.

Not forget to say that chanter's defensive buff makes me feel like I'm a scout, even if damage isn't there, and with movement bonus, evasion is easily capped. Real drawback is... cost. I didn't spend much money into my set, but at higher levels, it will cost much more, and if you roll for leather, you'll become a ninja. Let's let luck decide when soloing :/

For massive PvP and Elite PvE, I'm sticking with plate, as evasion isn't worth, unless it's capped at 30% I think (and even if it is, too much slots for something else wasted). In small scale PvP I didn't tried yet, but I'm not that convinced... maybe vs casters, and priests...

[khariste]

What concerns me is that, currently in plate I have ~990 evasion at 40. Average accuracy at 40 is something like 1200.
Even with the abyss gold set, its only 162 more evasion, up to ~1152 evasion. If I were to slot just about every stat with evasion, i would only get ~250 more evasion, or 1400 evasion. That's cutting it pretty close if you ask me, especially as it leaves no room for hp/SB

[Biscuit]

Originally Posted by khariste

What concerns me is that, currently in plate I have ~990 evasion at 40. Average accuracy at 40 is something like 1200.
Even with the abyss gold set, its only 162 more evasion, up to ~1152 evasion. If I were to slot just about every stat with evasion, i would only get ~250 more evasion, or 1400 evasion. That's cutting it pretty close if you ask me, especially as it leaves no room for hp/SB

And that is why they're recommending you go with leather gear for an evasion build.

[SirNiko]

None of these discussions are taking into account food/scrolls/etc that you can use to boost your evade by more. Wearing leather is a small loss of defense for a boost in spell resist, unless you can get your evade over the accuracy hurdle.

What else can you do to increase evade/reduce accuracy?

I'm also interested if this is viable for a gladiator. Unlike templars, we don't usually care about +block, as I'm using two-handers all the time for access to AoE stuff. That removes one hurdle from ditching plate. I don't think I have any skills to gimp enemy accuracy, though.

-SirNiko

[osMoz]

Just would like to say that if you are stunned, feared, knock downed etc... your evasion is... useless, meaning that in this case, you are going to take FULL damage.