Leapfrogging Ardent Defender

Tryanddie wrote:

Worldie wrote:Plus AD is one of our class defining abilities, and our "reply" to the lack of active panic buttons.

It would be like a warrior not training Shield Wall "because my healers are good enough". 5 point cost + the option of 40/21 was a ok trade-off, but 3 point cost and no real useful option to take instead...

You compare an active panic button with a passive skill that saves your life in dependence on pure luck?

Shield Wall is a warrior basic skill, they have to train Laststand (and it's a 1 Point Skill).

Training and Talenting aren't the same thing.

For example, when I played a shadow priest I used to claim that I never trained my healing spells so that I wouldn't have to heal :p

Worldie wrote:Plus AD is one of our class defining abilities, and our "reply" to the lack of active panic buttons.

It would be like a warrior not training Shield Wall "because my healers are good enough". 5 point cost + the option of 40/21 was a ok trade-off, but 3 point cost and no real useful option to take instead...

You don't really compare a controllable ability you spend some silver for to an unreliable one you have to spend 5/3 talent points for, do you? That's quite ... ridiculous.

Smartos wrote:

Worldie wrote:Plus AD is one of our class defining abilities, and our "reply" to the lack of active panic buttons.

It would be like a warrior not training Shield Wall "because my healers are good enough". 5 point cost + the option of 40/21 was a ok trade-off, but 3 point cost and no real useful option to take instead...

You don't really compare a controllable ability you spend some silver for to an unreliable one you have to spend 5/3 talent points for, do you? That's quite ... ridiculous.

Partially true... but what else are you going to get with those 3 talent points. I think the key point is that even though AD might not be ideal, there's no excuse not to take it.

Smartos wrote:

Worldie wrote:Plus AD is one of our class defining abilities, and our "reply" to the lack of active panic buttons.

It would be like a warrior not training Shield Wall "because my healers are good enough". 5 point cost + the option of 40/21 was a ok trade-off, but 3 point cost and no real useful option to take instead...

You don't really compare a controllable ability you spend some silver for to an unreliable one you have to spend 5/3 talent points for, do you? That's quite ... ridiculous.

I really compare to, because Ardent Defender is (situationally) much more powerful, and doesn't have a cooldown.

I wouldn't have been able to tank Sartharion without Ardent Defender for example, it procced after every single breath, and saved me from a crit right after a breath and multiple times from a swing after it (i was FAR away from block capped in that set).

Ardent Defender is our answer to Shield Wall. Has always been. Then in 3.0 blizz realized it wasn't enough and gave us also Bubblewall.

And when you combine Bubblewall and Ardent Defender, the damage mitigation just gets obscenely tasty.

The main difference is that, assuming a BIG hit lands and the tank is down to say 20% hp, generally a hit might still kill a shield walled warrior, while our reduction under bubblewall + AD is obscene.

It's not obscene it's only a 65% reduction and the warrior's is 60% even when outside of AD range where ours is 50%.

Fridmarr wrote:It's not obscene it's only a 65% reduction and the warrior's is 60% even when outside of AD range where ours is 50%.

Obscene has been mathematically proven to occur at damage reductions greater than or equal to 65%.

Jasari wrote:

Fridmarr wrote:It's not obscene it's only a 65% reduction and the warrior's is 60% even when outside of AD range where ours is 50%.

Obscene has been mathematically proven to occur at damage reductions greater than or equal to 65%.

Obscene because we factor Block after that which gets 100% applied.

A warrior *might* factor block (this "might" includes the possibility for SB to be up)

Worldie wrote:Obscene because we factor Block after that which gets 100% applied.

A warrior *might* factor block (this "might" includes the possibility for SB to be up)

They may also crit block for double or guarantee 2 X block value with the possibility to quad it. They may also give themselves another 20% - 30% health, one of the two really should be available. DP + AD is a good combo, but not obscene.

Remember, the difference is that they "may", we "do".

Worldie wrote:Remember, the difference is that they "may", we "do".

I get it, the benefit of those "mays" is that they drastically outpace what we can possibly achieve. In the best of both worlds situation we are likely worse off, in the worst of both worlds situation we are a bit better. I'll take my advantages where I can get them, more often than not we'll have the advantage but that advantage doesn't even approach what one would consider obscene.

Ardent defender is a nice addition and while it is flawed it gives us amazing survivability in certain areas. It does wonders in AoE/Trash tanking situations and could perform well on certain bosses. Sure, I understand this is the maintankadin forum, but I know I'm not maintanking all the time (Tried tanking sarth with 3 up once, not that much fun.) Warriors for example spec into quite a bit they probably don't benefit amazingly from (single target on a hard hitting boss.) A lot of it is just AoE tank viability and a lot of it is not really useful on live single target because of content design and itemization. Paladins are currently faced with the same potential issues, but there still isn't really a better investment than AD, surely not divinity.

Hyho!

As a reader of this forum since a long time, I got many thoughts, hints and tricks for my tankadin-career until now.
I've had an eye on the AD-leapfroggin-discussion a while, I searched for other opinions, I discussed a lot with some highend-tankadins from the european-forum and
....finally I tried to build up an excel-sheet which show me the best-case-scenario for AD to work and when AD will save tankadins life.

Best case is, correct me, if I'm wrong:
- you take one (or more) hit/spell/special/what ever, which bring you exactly(or as near as possible) one point below the AD-border (35% health)
- so you will get the maximum of "hp-range" AD can affect

My assumptions for this calculation:
- every hit causes the exactly same amount of damage (I know periodicaly dmg don't kill tanks in most cases, but easier to calculate with)
- my tankadin in this example get exactly 40.000 HP (I think with gear-scaling in Ulduar, no problem to reach)
- so AD will work between 1 and 13.999 HP, a pretty nice HP-range (remember: best-case!)

The Question my spreadsheet should answer:
Is there an amount of damage which will kill me without and let my survive with AD? (Ok, easy answer, yes no need for a spreadsheet)
Give me a range of damaging-attacks, relativly to the max-HP the tank have, which let an tankadin with maxed AD survive an additional hit!

Here you have an overview of the relevant hit-ranges:
for explanation: I cutted off the two-shots(50% or higher), you will agree with me, two-shots doesn't affect AD at all

[img=http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4608/adornotad.th.jpg]

My conclusion:
- "Soft-Hitter", which will hit for "only" 25% of your HP (or less), are irrelevant for Maintanks and AD, so not worth to discuss about.
- the only dmg-range which COULD be dangerous without AD is at a point ~1/3 of your HP

Note: could be dangerous
I wouldn't call a boss which is hitting for ~14-15K (after all mitgation) as a real "Hard-Hitter" (take a look at the hitranges for Ulduar)
This best-case-scenario for AD only works when you have to take three hits in a row, without any heal between.

I can't remember or build up an situation(maybe someone of you could?) where your healer aren't able to heal vor 4-6sec (including HoTs) AND the boss is hitting as hard as bevor in this time.
My knowledges of Encounter-Design from Blizz is:
- very heavy attack(Satharion breath, Gluth decimate, etc.) -> short break (for healer time to bring up the tank) -> standard attacks
- heavy attacks which will two-shot the tank -> no gameplay forced breaks for the healers
- normal attacks which can be healed through without big problems and healer-movement or something else


As an result for me:
In 3.1 AD isn't worth the three points you need to spend. I will take other talents instead...
For me 3% more inc-healing in EVERY situation > ~1-3% dmg-reduction in only very very special situations for example.
AD is not a must have, of course there are some special situations it could save the raid, but to expensive for 3 points!
3 Points for a trash-tank-talent? Cut off the leapfrogging-effect Blizz, they don't know how? Look at WotN and get an idea!


Hope somebody will read this to the end
Any mistakes in my thoughts? Let me know!
Any mistakes in my post? I know! Don't worry about my grammar/words

CU
Cavalorn

The glaring mistake you made is assuming that the only damage you take during a boss encounter is from the massive single hits. On almost every boss fight there's AOE damage going on, you'll get various DoTs on you, there might be an additional add or three, etc. Even if you're only mitigation 1% of the bosses big hits, you could be mitigating a significantly larger portion of all this AOE damage.

So if you get taken down to 10-20% HP, another hit from the boss will kill you regardless of AD. But that bleed affect is now doing 30% less damage, the Chain Lightning that would've killed you just dealt 30% less damage, and rather than dying during second or two that it took the big heal to land, you survived.