MDR comparisions

[yappo]

Has there been any number crunching done on the MDR values comparing avoidance and mastery? This for 4.2 obviously.

If so, are those numbers merely a scaling down block from 40 to 30 percent, or do they take into account some obscure 'average uptime' on Holy Shield?

I'm interested because MDR is a valuable stat for the 'proper but casual' tanks. I'll not argue that MDR is better than CTC for progression in content matching your gear. I'm pretty certain it's not. Us casuals, though, tend to be rather overgeared for our own progression, and we also do more mistakes (both personally and raidwide). This would be the reason we have to overgear content to down it in the first place

I plan to take an MDR stance, especially for my rank 1, and possibly rank 2, tier of failsafe gear guide, because I suspect that avoidance will be more valuable point for point than mastery from an MDR point of view, and the rapidly gearing tank (at least rank 1) should have rather minor issues with bursts while at the same time being so far away from capping CTC that overall survival is likely a better strategy for gearing.

A better geared failsafe tank should still see well over 90% CTC, in which case MDR centric gear should be used for those whose endgame consists of grinding five man heroics and pugging T11 raids. I won't advice anyone even only occasionally pugging early T12 bosses to build an MDR set, unless it's proven beyond doubt that a specific fight only runs physical damage as a dangerous 'back ground noise'.

Edit: Digren, are you fine with me stealing your fancy rank icons for use in my failsafe guide. If that's ok I'll try to approximate your tank ranks as much as possible in my own failsafe tank ranks. While some overlap is impossibleto avoid, I believe I should be able to come fairly close to yours.

[theckhd]

Yes, see the Derivations thread.

[yappo]

Yes, see the Derivations thread.

Superb! Thanks.

[econ21]

I would have thought CTC was better for grinding 5 mans than for raids - lots of small hits make block more valuable than it is with raid bosses.

MDR is good when there is no healer (he stood in the fire) or to save the healer mana, but I am not sure the latter is much of an issue in 5 mans when you can usually pause to drink (unlike in long raid boss fights).

I know block capping is good, but I still think CTC has value when you can't reach it. You are still making yourself smoother to heal and limiting exposure to a burst coming at a bad time.

Your post does raise an interesting question though - why do competent, over-geared tanks die in 5 mans? I am about to go back into the 5 man grind, so maybe I should keep a record. Thinking about it, you may have a point - the deaths I remember are where there was no healer (I'm the last man standing), so gearing for MDR may be appropriate. It is a nice ego boost to avoid a total wipe by virtue of your survivability.

[yappo]

When you're AoE tanking, then MDR is better than CTC (assuming you shopped CTC at the cost of MDR).

The reason is that the more incoming physical attacks you receive per second, the more your damage intake becomes statistics. Ie, you can basically forget about spikes.

All else being equal I'll also assume that your tendency to swim around in The Green Pool of Doom is not a function of your gear. This would indicate that if you're fanatic about your hygiene then you should be stamina stacking above everything else as green pools of doom seldom come with physical damage.

[econ21]

Yes, I take the point. I think my sloppy thinking that block was good for small hits was harking back to the old days when we blocked a fixed absolute amount rather than a percentage of the damage.

I'd love to see a gear list which reported CTC and MDR values for the items.

[Digren]

I'd love to see a gear list which reported CTC and MDR values for the items.

All it takes is adjusting the weighting factors and resorting to get this information in my gear spreadsheet, but I've been really hesitant to post an OpenDocument Spreadsheet file somewhere that is constantly out of date, given that I likely wouldn't want to keep it refreshed all the time. And I really want to stay away from putting too much information per line in a text guide, which just gets harder and harder to read once lines start wrapping.

I will say, though, that if the Powers That Be enable a way to post tables in phpbb, I'll come up with a way to add the numerical weightings for both MDR and CTC per item.

[yappo]

Stuff

So, what do you say to my question regarding your ranking graphics?

[Digren]

Stuff

So, what do you say to my question regarding your ranking graphics?

It's fine as long as it doesn't end up creating more questions than it solves. (Why is item X stage three in one list but stage two in another?) I'm sure we'll have a few differences of opinion which shouldn't be a big deal. It might encourage me to revise a few questionable decisions I've made.

Anyway, the whole guide is Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0. There's like five images at maybe 4k each, and any given reader should only request them once no matter how many times you use them on the page, so the load on my web host is nil.

[yappo]

[quote="Digren"
It's fine as long as it doesn't end up creating more questions than it solves. (Why is item X stage three in one list but stage two in another?) I'm sure we'll have a few differences of opinion which shouldn't be a big deal. It might encourage me to revise a few questionable decisions I've made.[/quote]

Super.

The only difference I can see would be reusing ranks. Or at least give an item multiple ranks. The cloak, for example, would be rank 1, 2 and 3 as it's clearly a viable cloak for the rank 3 tank.

That said, I think I'll let this thread return to the MDR topic.

[Digren]

The only difference I can see would be reusing ranks. Or at least give an item multiple ranks. The cloak, for example, would be rank 1, 2 and 3 as it's clearly a viable cloak for the rank 3 tank.

Sure. That's implied in my list. If a lower rank item is above a higher rank item, get it sooner and just keep using it.

[econ21]

All it takes is adjusting the weighting factors and resorting to get this information in my gear spreadsheet, but I've been really hesitant to post an OpenDocument Spreadsheet file somewhere that is constantly out of date, given that I likely wouldn't want to keep it refreshed all the time. And I really want to stay away from putting too much information per line in a text guide, which just gets harder and harder to read once lines start wrapping.

I will say, though, that if the Powers That Be enable a way to post tables in phpbb, I'll come up with a way to add the numerical weightings for both MDR and CTC per item.

I have vague memory of BC era gear guide that listed items and just had a "2.07%" or whatever after each item, where 2.07% was the contribution of the item to being uncrushable.

I think knowing how many percentage points (or, more likely, fractions of a point) an item contributes to CTC (and/or MDR) would be the most useful numerical information. When ranking an item you would use an index that weights CTC along with stamina, MDR etc, but the reader does not really need to know the index numbers, just the ranking. But when we are trying to hit 102.4%, then the actual contribution X that an item makes to that goal is useful information.

For example, take the relics. Something like:

2. [Deathclutch Figurine] : 700 Valor Points - 1.88% 1.16%
3. [Relic of Khaz'goroth] : 700 Justice Points - 1.90% 0.95%

where the numbers in bold are contribution to CTC and those in italics are contributions to MDR.

It's quite useful information. For example, it's telling me - obsessed with 102.4% - to hold onto my VPs. For Yappo's MDR focussed guide, it's an upgrade. Moreover, because you know the magnitudes, you can do stuff like see which upgrade gives the most CTC bang for your VP buck etc.

I may have got my numbers wrong[1], as I'm a newbie at this stuff, which is why it's useful to have them laid out in a guide by someone who knows what he's doing.



[1]For the Figurine, I caculate CTC as:
[40 (mastery gem) + 45 (reforge)]/79.68 + [45 + 77 + 128*0.27]/206 = 1.88

where I assume 206 avoidance rating gives 1% avoidance and 79.68 mastery gives 1% block

For MDR, I am just scaling the block rating by 33% - not sure if that's right.


To be honest, it's not a priority for your guide but would be neat imo.

[KysenMurrin]

You need to account for Kings on the Strength contribution to Parry; more importantly, though, because of diminishing returns on Dodge and Parry an absolute value is impossible as it depends on the rest of the gear a character is wearing.

[econ21]

more importantly, though, because of diminishing returns on Dodge and Parry an absolute value is impossible as it depends on the rest of the gear a character is wearing.

That's right but that's what I meant by having to make some assumptions. I'm evaluating at 206 rating =1 % as that what the value was for me last time I looked. But for a guide, you would do it at some default gearset (e.g. Digren's normal raiding model or Theckhd's T11 matlab gearset).

The point is not to report an accurate absolute CTC value for each player (that's what your 102.4 macro or Mr Robot are for), but to compare gear. If the relic is not a big CTC upgrade for me, I'd wager it's not for other raiders' gearsets.

[Digren]

I have vague memory of BC era gear guide that listed items and just had a "2.07%" or whatever after each item, where 2.07% was the contribution of the item to being uncrushable.

I think knowing how many percentage points (or, more likely, fractions of a point) an item contributes to CTC (and/or MDR) would be the most useful numerical information. When ranking an item you would use an index that weights CTC along with stamina, MDR etc, but the reader does not really need to know the index numbers, just the ranking. But when we are trying to hit 102.4%, then the actual contribution X that an item makes to that goal is useful information.

For example, take the relics. Something like:

2. [Deathclutch Figurine] : 700 Valor Points - 1.88% 1.16%
3. [Relic of Khaz'goroth] : 700 Justice Points - 1.90% 0.95%

where the numbers in bold are contribution to CTC and those in italics are contributions to MDR.

But that would need to ignore or assume diminishing returns, something that didn't exist in BC (hence the BC guide you remember). Instead what you'd get in my guide would be:

2. [Earthshape Pauldrons] : Grim Batol (Normal) Drahga Shadowburner : 365 453
3. [Pauldrons of Unholy Rituals] : The Stonecore (Quest) Followers and Leaders : 327 455

where the numbers are stat value summations based on the relative weightings used in each case. There's no way to correlate those numbers to anything on your character sheet. In both cases other stats (stamina, armor) have nonzero weights, so you can't even say with certainty something ranked higher on a CTC list actually has higher CTC. That would require yet another column.

It would be nice to have a way to convey more information, but OMG thinking about maintaining this in bbcode is brutal. I would have to be able to export from OpenDoc to BBCode or something to be able to do this automatically. (Hmm, both OpenDoc Spreadsheet and BBCode are open formats. I wonder if such a tool exists...?)