Tanking in... Leather?

[Lyrabeth]

Ok, so bear with me here. Yes yes, I know templars should wear plate and all, but a few bits of maths has been going through my mind, and I want you to hear me out. Put simply... i think that from about 40 onwards or so, Templars will take less damage wearing a full set of Leather. I think... I'm too poor ingame to get a fully gemmed leather set to test, but...

Ok, so Evasion is capped at 30%. To get 30% you need 300 rating above your opponent's accuracy. Plate has incredibly low evasion. Block cap at 50 according to Koreans (50%) is 1800 rating, which implies Evasion cap is 1600, so you're looking at 1300 average pve accuracy.

What this means is... i think.. that any templar with under 1300 evasion (probably all of them!) will never dodge a single attack unless a low level or heavily debuffed mob (or heavily buffed templar). Therefore, its stupid to stack evasion gems (i know most templars stack crit, but thinking a PVE tank build here for pure mitigation using Threat stigmas like incite), because most will do nothing as you'll need loads just to hit 0%.

Anyway... Leather armor has very high evasion. It's quite possible that a templar tanking in full leather with evasion gems socketed all over the place will hit the 30% evasion cap... which gives her, I think, 30% less total damage taken than a plate templar, as Evasion is rolled for first. It also has higher magic damage.

The catch? Physical Defense. The leather wearer will of course take bigger hits. This is why plate wearers wear plate... but... looking at the formulae for PhyDef... and the surprisingly SMALL difference between full leather and full plate... I wonder if the difference is honestly that significant.

An example... a Templar at 40 will probably have 1200-1300 physical defense, a Ranger at 40 might have 850-900... really not much less. Physical defense against same level mobs means you get -1 damage off each hit per 10 defense... so if there's a 400 armor difference, that means the leather wearer will take 40 more damage per hit than a plate wearer. (these figures are very rough, comparing me to my similar level ranger friend in average quest greens and a few blues).

But is 40 per hit significant? 20 Per hit more with blocked hits and a good shield. The leather wearer is already taking 30% less damage from evasion... so as soon as mobs start hitting for more than 134 damage unblocked then the leather wearer is taking less damage overall. At 40, in Kaidan HQ and such, mobs seem to be hitting me for 200-250, and big hits can be as high as 1200-2000 if a special attack (like the Tracker's Mortal Blow).

So... maybe I'm wrong. Please tell me I've made a mistake somewhere. But it seems to me from looking at the formulae that if you want to be a PvE tank that takes as little damage as possible, as soon as mobs get elite you're going to take FAR less overall damage if you go Leather and socket for Evasion, than you would if you went full Plate, at a threat loss of course. (You could possibly socket parry in plate too for max mitigation, but of course, every point of Evasion or Parry reduces your overall block reactives).

What are peoples' thoughts? And please dont turn this into a "templars ninjad my scout's leather" thread! Pure theorycrafting.

[khariste]

Templars have low Evasion to begin with. Even going full leather and stacking all evasion stones, you'd probably barely hit 30% against normal non-elite mobs, and sacrifice a ton of DPS/Shield Block/ HP Stones doing it.

For example: the level 40 abyss leather set only grants 162 more evasion over the plate set.

[Stonewahl]

I think you would drop dead every time the RNG decided to hate you and Evasion failed quite a few times in a row.

[Lyrabeth]

Mmm, well those are definitely the conventional school of thought. Yes, bigger hits and evasion means potentially more streak damage... but by how much? Surely streak damage that would kill you is going to be from huge hits, and the bigger the hit the less armor makes a difference. Also, sure you can stack Shield Defense, but it caps out at 50% very very easily (in fact, most Templars hit the block cap with just shield def in their shield and no other gems).

The difference between myself and a same level ranger, plate and leather, was about 400 physical defense vs 250 evasion. So what's better? -40 off every unblocked hit, or 25% dodge chance. It's easy to see that as soon as hits start being 160 or more in that case, the dodge will win out over time. Not to count how HUGE some special attacks are. A 2000 damage mortal blow will hit a templar for almost the same as a ranger, but the ranger has 30% chance to block it. I hear some top end korean guilds are using Assassins to do the big boss tanking simply due to evasion.

I do appreciate what both of you said -seems- logical, but the numbers just don't add up. It just seems to me in this game that:

a.) Physical Defense has almost no impact on damage between armor types, especially when hits get huge.
b.) Evasion is awesome if you can cap it.

Both leading to Leather.

[Trenyc]

To elaborate, Rangers have very high base Evasion. As a Templar, the only Evasion you're going to get is what's on your armor. A full set of crafted blue level 38 leather has a total of 638 evasion on it, and level 40 green manastones only offer +13 Evasion each. As each blue has 3 slots for stones, assume you socket Evasion in every slot your character has.

3 stones * 7 slots * 13 points per stone = 273 bonus

273 bonus from manastones + 638 bonus from a full set of Worthy Strong Durable armor = 911 Evasion

A level 40 Noble Worthy Durable Adamantium Sword offers 619 Accuracy--a number, you'll note, which makes it impossible to cap Evasion using regular armor and manastone bonuses calculated above.

Also, many enemies, like physical DPS players, have increased Accuracy, meaning it's likely very literally impossible for a Templar to cap Evasion even in PvE.

While leather armor does tend to offer better magic resist values (I really don't understand why, but it does), I personally don't believe it's a viable option to sacrifice every single manastone slot in addition to the PDef. Your survivability will not increase substantially since againt any mob that is truly dangerous in the first place, your Evasion will (even with full Evasion manastones) still (probably) be substantially lower than their Accuracy.

Also, in my experience (I haven't tested this), it seems Block is rolled before mitigation from PDef. If I'm right, this would mean that the bonus from PDef is not reduced when you block--40 damage is 40 damage is 40 damage. Also, 40 (or 20) damage is significant. You may not think so, but that's 40 damage on every physical hit. Anytime you're getting wailed on by a very fast, low damage-per-attack mob or player, you'd learn very quickly how valuable this is. On an average autoattack hit from a Worthy Noble Durable Adamantium Sword, this translates to almost a 30% damage reduction. Of course special abilities will reduce this number drastically, but you have to remember that this mitigation occurs on every physical attack that damages you. A 100% chance to reduce even 5% damage translates explicitly, by comparison, to 16.7% Evasion chance. Please note that on average, over all the times you will be hit (especially by PvE mobs), the damage reduction value may actually be higher, even to the point where the value of 400 PDef may approach or surpass the value of 911 Evasion.

Just to note, your 40 damage estimate is accurate. The leather armor used for calculations above has a total of 752 PDef, while the plate (if you ignore the bonuses) has 1,172. However, if you want to accept the argument that plate pieces tend to have PDef bonuses on them (while leather pieces rarely do), I'll note that the actual cumulative total on the plate is 1,321 PDef--a number that blows the Evasion advantage of Leather out of the water.

There is too much math involved for me to lay it all out on in this post (especially since I'm at work), but I pink swear plate is worlds better by about eleventy quadrillion miles. If you have specific questions, lay em out.

[Opy]

This thread gets my geeky warm feeling stamp of approval.

[dangeraardvark]

People need to realize how minor the difference in physical defense between plate and leather is, especially when taking big hits. But wearing leather instead is only viable if it's possible to reach a significant amount evasion, which according to Trenyc, it's difficult or impossible to do with low base evasion.

[khariste]

Originally Posted by dangeraardvark

People need to realize how minor the difference in physical defense between plate and leather is, especially when taking big hits. But wearing leather instead is only viable if it's possible to reach a significant amount evasion, which according to Trenyc, it's difficult or impossible to do with low base evasion.

Bah! I said as much in the second post

[LittleWing]

Originally Posted by dangeraardvark

People need to realize how minor the difference in physical defense between plate and leather is, especially when taking big hits. But wearing leather instead is only viable if it's possible to reach a significant amount evasion, which according to Trenyc, it's difficult or impossible to do with low base evasion.

Just wanna ask why do u consider evasion as your form to negate dmg.

If you evade an attack obviously you wont block, thus you wont trigger some important skills.

Also, imo the thing that hurts more is magic dmg....which chain armor has more then plate, and the PD loss isnt great.

So since you cant block magic attacks imo it looks more reliable a choise of higher MR then evasion, you wont evade magic attacks ( cause of the low evade/accuracy of attacker) but u can resist them....every other type of attack can be blocked.


On the other hand, temps get stigmas and skills to fill these little gaps, aether armor e.g. for casters, UD for CC...so we have tools.

[Owyn]

Couldn't find a level fifty templar on the top score boards, but I found a L48 assassin and templar on Siel which I used for comparison. Close enough to 50 so that we should be able to get a good idea.

Templar: Aion™ Online :: Character & Legion
Block - 898
Evade - 1173
Parry - 1561
Accuracy - 1458

Assassin: Aion™ Online :: Character & Legion
Block - 688
Evade - 1428
Parry - 1412
Accuracy - 1457

Both have only +attack and +crit stones slotted.

A quick analysis shows that the templar has zero chance to block the assassin; has an 11% chance to parry, and no chance to evade.

Templar Gear gives: 1405 phys def, 516 evade, 981 magic resist
Assassin Gear gives: 617 phys def, 660 evade, 893 magic resist

If you put the templar in the assassin's gear, he loses almost 800 physical defense, and gains almost 150 evade. The evade he gets still doesn't put him over the minimum needed to evade the assassin AT ALL. And he loses 100 magic resist to boot.

Not good. OK, real world example aside, let's put that templar in some imaginary gear instead. We'll compare Expert Tough Durable leather to Expert Durable Orichalcum plate - both L48 crafted items needing 430 skill, all blue.

Plate: 1240 phys def, 509 evade, 464 magic resist
Leather: 1003 phys def, 775 evade, 414 magic resist

So this time, the templar loses 237 phy def, and gains 266 evade. The evade is 259 points above the actual numbers pulled from the real character above, so if that real character was put in the Expert Tough Durable Leather set, he'd have an evade of 1432 - STILL not enough to evade the assassin (or even another templar!).

It is worth noting, however, that the assassin cannot evade the templar, either! I'm not sure what that means... Even in the better gear, the assassin would have about an 8% evade against the templar, which is Not That Good. It sounds like in order to be really effective, Evasion requires one to devote at least half your manastone slots to it. Running even ten stones at +13 evade would give another 130 points, enough to kick the assassin in crafted leather up to 21% evade, and the templar up to 10%. But that's at a substantial loss of damage. If they went "all in" for about 260 points of extra evade, the assassin would get up to capped evade on the templar, and the templar would hit 23% vs the assassin, but at a huge loss of DPS.

It doesn't really sound like evade is worth it - for either class???


EDIT: Important addition... The baseline evade for the L48 templar is 657 (without gear), and for the assassin is 768. That's 111 points, or roughly 11% evade bonus for being an assassin.

[Killer Avocado]

Also worth remembering that Plate has a +2 per piece per enchantment level bonus over Leather. So, at full +10's on all 5 pieces that's an extra 100 PDef.

[Volacious]

The shield defense stat you have for the templar is way off - it's obviously the stat calculated as if he's using a 2hander and not his shield. (the stats on aionsource seem to be calculated using whatever weapons/buffs you log off with)

[Rhall]

I cant say much about sin gear, but speaking of templar his stats are low. For example at lvl 39 i am having 1300 shield defence. So as Volacious suggested templar might have his 2hander equiped.

To have best result you should get 2 people equiped with for example same lvl crafted set gear with all manastone slots empty or filled with same stones.

[Owyn]

I think you're both right - the templar is wearing his 2H sword, and so we're not seeing the shield bonus in his block score. Easy enough to fix - click the shield, read the score, add it to his current block and you should be about right.

That still doesn't impact the rest of the data, though.

[Tsaka]

Real tanks wear cloth.