Paladin's BiS Shield in 3.2

Inspiration no longer increases armor.

Ardent Defender also doesn't really contribute anything to the equation.

That said, you really can't just look at "what gives the most EH" and ignore every other stat on the shield.

I upgraded from borean Guard to Crystal Plated Vanguard (245)(Or Forlorn Barrier (245)if you're horde) tonight, it's awsome.

Particularly because the itemisation on it is insanely good, dodge > parry, bv >> br and of course it's higher ilvl and thus higher armor.

The lack of sockets is disappointing, it sucks losing that 600hp raidbuffed, but the 30 odd str and other stats more than make up for it.

Likewise even in effective health, it comes out ahead. Now I only do very rough calculations in my head to work things out effective health, but how I do it is:

800 armor = roughly 2% less dmg than what you would take without it (I remember doing some calculations regarding defenders code that worked out to around 2% less dmg)

thus the roughly 440 additioanl armor from CPB (245) is around 1% dmg reduction

At 47k life buffed, my life is extended by ~1% (470 life) from the armor on CPV(245) + ~185BV (135bv +30%) for a total of around 645
At 47k life buffed, my life is extended by around 600 with the stam from BG (232)

That's assuming that the 1% dmg reduction is roughly accurate (Although am pretty sure that's roughly it), and assuming that you're taking a single 100% dmg hit (As opposed to the multiple hits you'd take in a real fight).


That's my napkin math on it, where it comes out slightly ahead on effective health, even though the calculation doesn't I think really do justice to BV. In general, I feel that armor and block value often aren't valued enough by the community at large, as both of these are imo extremely important tanking stats

So yeah, basically what I'm saying, is are you able to perhaps calculate effective health in another way so that you can take into account BV. Since the way I see it, CPV(245) is clearly better for a prot pally than BG(232), but your BiS list has it lower, which to prot pallys who don't necessarily think for themselves may have them turning it down because they think BG is better, when the new one is imo perfect prot pally itemisation.

Boreal Guard vs Forlorn Barrier 245 is a question I'm sure I'll be faced with at some point in the next few weeks, so here's my own attempt at number crunching the physical EH differences between them. As I expect to be block capped with raid buffs using either shield, I will be including Block Value from both. And as I am going to be faced with this question sooner rather than later, I'll be using something close to my current buffed armor and health values. For simplicity's sake, and mostly just to get a feel for the numbers involved, I'm using a very simplistic model, ignoring incoming heals or absorption effects.

Boreal Guard vs Forlorn Barrier (assuming 22 def enchant, as that's what I'd be using):

152 stam, 7960 armor, 223 BV, 39 str vs 108 stam, 8309 armor, 349 BV, 71 str

simplifies to

44 stam vs 349 armor, 126 BV, 32 str.

After talents, raid buffs and meta gem (divine strength +15% str, toughness +10% armor, sacred duty +8% stam, redoubt +30% BV, combat expertise +6% stam, AED 2% armor, kings +10% stam/str):

55.4 stam vs 430 armor, 164 BV, 40.48 str

55.4 stam vs 430 armor, 184 BV

Assuming a test base of (buffed): 47k hp, 29k armor, 1400 BV

With Boreal Guard:

47,554 hp, 29,000 armor, 1400 BV

With Forlorn Barrier 245:

47,000 hp, 29,430 armor, 1584 BV


Assume a hit, after damage reduction from imp rf, bosanc, (renewed hope if it's still stacking with sanc as per 3.1), SotT and DP glyph hits for 70,000 damage.

Using DR% = Armor / (Armor + (467.5 * AttackerLevel - 22167.5)) :

With Boreal Guard

DR% = 29,000 / (29,000 + 16,635) = 63.54%

So the 70,000 damage hit is turned into a 25,517 hit.

1,400 BV further reduces that to a 24,117 hit. The tank is now left on 23,437 hp assuming they started at full health with no absorption in place.

The AD threshold with 47,554 total health is 16,644 hp.


With Forlorn Barrier

DR% = 63.89%

So the 70,000 damage hit is turned into a 25,278 hit.

1584 BV further reduces that to a 23,694 hit. The tank is now left on 23,306 hp assuming they started at full health with no absorption in place.

The AD threshold with 47,000 total health is 16,450 hp.


What happens if a second 70,000 (post other mitigation, pre armor, pre-AD) hit comes in before any heals lands? (I'm on shaky ground now, if I recall correctly AD now functions as an absorb and so does not synergise with Block Value as it used to, but I'm not 100% sure of how it's calculated.)


With Boreal Guard, the 70k hit is turned into 25,517 hit. 1400 is mitigated by BV, leaving 24,117 damage. The tank is on 23,437 hp, so of the 24,117 hit, 6,793 damage is unaffected by AD. So AD acts on the remaining 17,324 damage, reducing it by 30% down to 12,127. So the Boreal Guard tank is now left on 4,517 hp.


With Forlorn Barrier, the 70k hit is turned into a 25,278 hit. 1584 is mitigated by BV, leaving 23,694 damage. The tank is on 23,306 hp, so of the 23,694 hit, 6,856 damage is unaffected by AD. So AD acts on the remaining 16,838 damage, reducing it by 30% down to 11,787. So the Forlorn Barrier tank is now left on 4,663 hp.

To look at it from a different angle, what's the biggest single hit that each setup can survive?

AD kicks in on the portion of damage that takes one below 35% health, with an absorption equivalent to 30% of that damage. 1.3 * 0.35 = 0.455, so AD gives an extra 15.5% EH

Boreal Guard:

47,554 * 1.155 = 54,925 hp

54,925 + 1,400 = 56,325 hp

56,325 / (1 - 0.6354) = 154,484 hp

So a raw hit (post other sources of mitigation) exceeding 154,484 damage would be needed to kill the Boreal Guard tank in one shot.

Forlorn Barrier:

47,000 * 1.155 = 54,285 hp

54,285 + 1,584 = 55,869 hp

55,869 / (1 - 0.6389) = 154,719 hp

So a raw hit exceeding 154,719 hp damage would be needed to kill the Forlorn Barrier tank in one shot.


So, I believe at least, in both these contrived situations, Forlorn Barrier 245 is the superior shield. Obviously if the prime source of danger is a magical nuke then Boreal Guard has a clear lead. If someone could check my method, especially when it comes to ardent defender numbers, I'd appreciate it.

Lore wrote:Ardent Defender also doesn't really contribute anything to the equation.

That said, you really can't just look at "what gives the most EH" and ignore every other stat on the shield.

Well, avoidance is valuable too. But I definitely wouldn't wear a worse EH shield because it had +hit.

Lore wrote:Ardent Defender also doesn't really contribute anything to the equation.

That said, you really can't just look at "what gives the most EH" and ignore every other stat on the shield.

Obvious snark: Sure you can, that's what the original post is.

More seriously... why not? That's pretty much what I do with every piece of gear in every slot for progression tanking.

--
Meloree, <Edge>, Garona

Lore wrote:Ardent Defender also doesn't really contribute anything to the equation.

That said, you really can't just look at "what gives the most EH" and ignore every other stat on the shield.

Given the solid state of base Paladin threat and how Blizzard designs hard mode encounters, what else is there to be concerned about when evaluating shield choices?

PapaNasty wrote:I upgraded from borean Guard to Crystal Plated Vanguard (245)(Or Forlorn Barrier (245)if you're horde) tonight, it's awsome.

Particularly because the itemisation on it is insanely good, dodge > parry, bv >> br and of course it's higher ilvl and thus higher armor.

The lack of sockets is disappointing, it sucks losing that 600hp raidbuffed, but the 30 odd str and other stats more than make up for it.

Likewise even in effective health, it comes out ahead. Now I only do very rough calculations in my head to work things out effective health, but how I do it is:

800 armor = roughly 2% less dmg than what you would take without it (I remember doing some calculations regarding defenders code that worked out to around 2% less dmg)

thus the roughly 440 additioanl armor from CPB (245) is around 1% dmg reduction

At 47k life buffed, my life is extended by ~1% (470 life) from the armor on CPV(245) + ~185BV (135bv +30%) for a total of around 645
At 47k life buffed, my life is extended by around 600 with the stam from BG (232)

That's assuming that the 1% dmg reduction is roughly accurate (Although am pretty sure that's roughly it), and assuming that you're taking a single 100% dmg hit (As opposed to the multiple hits you'd take in a real fight).


That's my napkin math on it, where it comes out slightly ahead on effective health, even though the calculation doesn't I think really do justice to BV. In general, I feel that armor and block value often aren't valued enough by the community at large, as both of these are imo extremely important tanking stats

So yeah, basically what I'm saying, is are you able to perhaps calculate effective health in another way so that you can take into account BV. Since the way I see it, CPV(245) is clearly better for a prot pally than BG(232), but your BiS list has it lower, which to prot pallys who don't necessarily think for themselves may have them turning it down because they think BG is better, when the new one is imo perfect prot pally itemisation.

Alright, I prepared a spreadsheet that contains the calculations needed to figure out raid buffed EH.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key= ... l=en&pli=1

With regard to the dodge vs. parry disparity; the difference between between by the Boreal Guard and Forlorn (245) is literally 0.01% avoidance for a T9 BiS Paladin. It's a fairly minor consideration in Forlorn's favor.

The block rating is indeed entirely wasted if Holy Shield has a 100% uptime for a given encounter. The Paladin in question has much more than 102.4% avoidance+block.

A higher ilvl shield does not necessarily grant higher EH as both stamina and armor must be taken into account. I invite you to check my math in the spreadsheet I linked. Based on these calculations, Boreal grants 457 more physical EH and 814 more magical EH than Forlorn when fully raid buffed.

I'm somewhat reluctant to include block value in a physical EH calculation given the types of encounters in AC. For example, during the Icehowl physical EH stress point you're stunned down thus unable to block. During the physical EH stress point of Gormok you cannot block the imaple, the bleed, or the stun.

Forlorn (245) is superior to Boreal Guard in terms of "physical damage per hit" and consequently "total physical damage taken over time." I suppose this could be another primary consideration when deciding on which shield to use.

Thats why you keep both! When you need a bit more stam, swap in the Boreal Guard, when you know your gonna have 100% HS uptime, with out stuns, slap on the Forlorn...

I have both.

Worth keeping both.

On fights like algalon the 245 shield is going to be a bit better.