3.2 AD

Has anyone done anything besides napkin math on this ability yet?

I've kinda zoned out of theorycrafting. Been too busy guild leading, raid leading, and keeping up to date on ret stuff.
But with 3.2 on the horizon, I'm wondering if tankadins are really going to be OP. If so, I should start gearing my own prot set again to take advantage of it for however long it may last.

I've seen the napkin math 15% EH boost bandied around. Again, looking for something a bit more thorough: I'm wondering if anyone's done any in-depth analysis using sims and models.

I haven't seen any yet, but one thing I do find kinda funny is how much this 3 point talent increases the amount of damage needed to kill a prot paladin in PvP. Assuming you get healed back up to 30% (no MS, full def, no crit heal) then ardent defender by itself increases the amount of damage needed to kill you to 157% of a paladins health, it's pretty nuts.

Magnusharkov wrote:I haven't seen any yet, but one thing I do find kinda funny is how much this 3 point talent increases the amount of damage needed to kill a prot paladin in PvP. Assuming you get healed back up to 30% (no MS, full def, no crit heal) then ardent defender by itself increases the amount of damage needed to kill you to 157% of a paladins health, it's pretty nuts.

Hey, you have a full two minutes to kill them again!

At first I thought this was a reference to 14/03/0003.

The new AD, since it cannot be leapfrogged, is worth about 15% more EH. We're all not sure how to consider the life-saver effect. Still waiting to see what makes it into live.

Magnusharkov wrote:I haven't seen any yet, but one thing I do find kinda funny is how much this 3 point talent increases the amount of damage needed to kill a prot paladin in PvP. Assuming you get healed back up to 30% (no MS, full def, no crit heal) then ardent defender by itself increases the amount of damage needed to kill you to 157% of a paladins health, it's pretty nuts.

Well you have to be wearing defense gear to get the full effect, so at least you won't see the prot healer abusing it.

Is there stil a debuff that cancels the effect of the AD after you lose your freebie?

I wasn´t sure if it´s a bug or intended that the debuff isn´t there anymore.

Dantriges wrote:Is there stil a debuff that cancels the effect of the AD after you lose your freebie?

I wasn´t sure if it´s a bug or intended that the debuff isn´t there anymore.

I'm pretty confident it's not a bug. The tooltip is pretty clear about it.

BTW, I fail to see how it can be 15% more EH. 35% less damage under 30% give 0.3x0.35 = 0.105 hence 10.5% more EH...

Belarkan wrote:

Dantriges wrote:BTW, I fail to see how it can be 15% more EH. 35% less damage under 30% give 0.3x0.35 = 0.105 hence 10.5% more EH...

Imagine you have a health pool of 10,000, you then take 6,500 damage leaving the rest of your 3,500 health as being entirely in AD range. It now takes 5,000 additional base damage to kill you (5,000*0.7=3,500). In total you have taken 6500+5000 base damage to kill you, which is 11,500 or 15% more EH

Magnusharkov wrote:

Belarkan wrote:

Dantriges wrote:BTW, I fail to see how it can be 15% more EH. 35% less damage under 30% give 0.3x0.35 = 0.105 hence 10.5% more EH...

Imagine you have a health pool of 10,000, you then take 6,500 damage leaving the rest of your 3,500 health as being entirely in AD range. It now takes 5,000 additional base damage to kill you (5,000*0.7=3,500). In total you have taken 6500+5000 base damage to kill you, which is 11,500 or 15% more EH

What I had previously written here was WRONG, see Theck's response below.

Dantriges wrote:Is there stil a debuff that cancels the effect of the AD after you lose your freebie?

I wasn´t sure if it´s a bug or intended that the debuff isn´t there anymore.

Just tested this last night and I was still getting damage reduction while under the AD debuff. I have the testing report in my blog today.

Honorshammer wrote:

Dantriges wrote:Is there stil a debuff that cancels the effect of the AD after you lose your freebie?

I wasn´t sure if it´s a bug or intended that the debuff isn´t there anymore.

Just tested this last night and I was still getting damage reduction while under the AD debuff. I have the testing report in my blog today.

Jere also confirmed this the other week when replying to my concerns that we would lose the AD effect. Seems we won't be losing it's goodness as a result of "cheat death" proccing

Belarkan wrote:BTW, I fail to see how it can be 15% more EH. 35% less damage under 30% give 0.3x0.35 = 0.105 hence 10.5% more EH...

Because that's not how the math works. Magnusharkov had it correct. It can also be found in the AD thread in the general forum.

It should have been obvious by the fact that your formula caps out at 30% extra EH. It can be shown to be wrong with a simple example where we consider the limit as the damage reduction goes to 100%:

If you took 90% less damage under 30%, your formula would give 0.3*0.9=0.270, or 27% more EH
If you took 99% less damage under 30%, your formula would give 0.3*0.99=0.297, or 29.7% more EH
If you took 100% less damage under 30%, your formula would give 0.3*1=0.3, or 30% more EH.

This has to be wrong, because if damage below 30% was reduced by 100% (i.e. reduced to zero), you'd be unkillable, which is an infinite boost to EH.

In addition, the current version of the PTR patch notes say that it reduces damage taken below 35% health by 30%.

The appropriate way to calculate it is (health)/(% damage taken). In other words:
(health over 35%) / (% damage taken over 35%) + (health under 35% ) / (% damage taken under 35%).
Health over 35% is just (0.65*health), health under 35% is just (0.35*health). The only difference between the two denominators is an extra factor of 0.7 due to the 30% AD damage reduction.
We can easily factor out our base EH due to talents and other passive effects: EH_base = (health)/(% damage taken). This leaves us with:

EH (after AD) = EH_base * (0.65 + 0.35/0.7) = EH_base * 1.15, for a 15% boost to EH.

Note that if you let the reduction go to 100% in this formula (the 0.7 goes to 0), you do indeed get an infinite amount for your EH, as it should be.

Also, if you look at the core definition of effective health ("how much damage is needed to kill you"), the save effect can be considered an EH increase also, since it means a boss has to do 130% of your health in damage to actually kill you.

Well more than 130%, since health below 35% is worth more, and you get it twice!

157% of your health to kill you, + more depending on how much you were "overkilled" for.

Candiru wrote:Well more than 130%, since health below 35% is worth more, and you get it twice!

157% of your health to kill you, + more depending on how much you were "overkilled" for.

Yup, I get the same number:
0.65+0.35/0.7+0.3/0.7 = 1.579, or 158% EH.

Of course, you only have that extra 43% EH once every two minutes. Or more accurately, you have the extra 43% EH until you use it once, after which you're without it for 2 minutes.

Even then, it's misleading. In terms of raw damage, that's what's needed to kill you if it comes in relatively small increments. However, the way AD works, you could take a hit of 1 million damage and survive, after which you still have 43% of your EH. So your EH for a single hit is effectively infinite until AD procs, after which you have 43% of your base EH for 2 minutes or until you die, whichever comes first.

Another way to think of it is that we have infinite EH until the GS procs and up to 115% EH for two minutes afterward if we're healed to full after the GS proc. It's not strictly correct to say that though, since this is only valid for single attacks and EH doesn't include healing by definition. But for bosses where you're taking one large hit at regular intervals, that's the net effect.