Avoidance/AC

[Zann]

Assuming I haven't as yet maxed the Avoidance cap.

How much AC is worth sacrificing per point of Avoidance and vice versa?

Also would be preferable max avoidance or AC as high as possible?

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

[olts]

simple answer: max avoidance, put ac as high as possible. and along with that max shielding. both, shielding and avoidance, max at 35, avoidance being more important than shielding at the beginning, because it let ya completly avoid a hit. later on, when mobs hit harder and have high atk, shielding becomes very valuable too. especially with high ac.

in general i wouldnt trade ac for avoidance if i could avoid it. id rather trade hp and mana for ac, avoidance and shielding. but this is a neverending debate, some ppl will disagree. assuming you group though, hp and mana are very easy to come by these days - ac and tank2mods are way harder to get, especially if you use the new group gear. so id focus on these, hp and mana you get anyways. if ya plan to raid newest content though, hp will again have its value and the formula changes...

c.

[Saintsaens]

Avoidance cap is 100, not 35. Shielding is 35, though.

[knytul]

Priorities:
1st: Avoidance
2nd: Shielding
3rd: AC
4th: HP

any questions?

[olts]

[Zann]

Many thanks for the advice as always

[Zorbee]

I agree with Knytul's list.

[Normy]

Kyntuls list is excellent for the tanking paladin. When it doubt, that won't steer you wrong. Avoiding a hit, especially on a hard hitting named, is a huge benefit.

[Abazzagorath]

Shielding is overrated, particularly for the non-raiding paladins who are usually the ones forced to make a choice on shielding vs something else.

If you have a choice of, say, a 3% shielding aug or a 25 ac aug, I'd go ac even if under shielding cap. Mob damage bonus hasn't scaled up nearly as high as mob DI over the last 4 years, so its value has diminished outside of raids. Obviously, you want the most you can possibly get, but I don't feel that sacrificing ac is worth it for it. Sacrifice hp if you have enough to take full advantage of heals from whomever is healing you without being 2 rounded, sure.

Squires are probably the roughest mob you will face as a non-raider, for example (other tougher mobs like geartop are only tougher due to adds), and its DB is only around 600 or so (DI is around 340? something like that), meaning even 10% shielding is saving you 60 hp per hit, meaning 240 dmg on a quad round where all 4 hits land. So how much ac would you have to sacrifice for 10% shielding as a grouper? A lot, and it isn't worth it.

Without high DB/DI ratio mobs (probably still some raid ones, but not really anything that comes close to things that were around years ago), shielding becomes more of a dps taken over time efficiency stat, rather than something that is truly necessary to survive one shot tanking of named mobs.

The point? Be careful on gear choices and if you have the choice between being at 25% shielding or 35% sheilding and 200 less ac, keep the higher ac and lower shielding, it will help you more where it matters.

[varutia]

This is a difficult one actually, taking Drachnid in RoI since that is what I am kiling most right now. They for 1100 max and about 250 minimum, rough number of course.

So if you have 35 percent shielding it equals 87.5 damage and 7.95 percent damage saved. Does 8 percent worth the trade of roughly 460 AC? Very very difficult to say unless parsed extensively and only would apply for one mob and one AC value. The good thing with shielding is that is it reduces the Maximum hit, nothing else will do this for you as Paladin, the more AC you have more effective your shielding will be. So how effective your shielding will be largely depend on how much ac you have. More AC only will reduce the chance you getting bigger hits, you still subject to those nasty max hitting quads, with shielding it will make that quad smaller, this is the invaluble thing AC will not provide you. The more trivial the content, more useful the shielding will become.

Ultimatly what ratio are good for you highly depend on what content you are, what gears level you have, what you got access too, so not a straight AC better than shielding.

[Abazzagorath]

[frocus]

Think it was the anueks in Txevu on one of the events shielding was really effective on had a db of 999 and di of 1/20 min hit was 999 max was 1k shielding really rocked for off tanking those, but i cant really think of another mob at that extreme. As a grouper primarily i have a few ac plus saves augs and ac/hp augs i swap out for purer ac augs with a bit more ac to deal with ae's if need but have max avoidance and only about 16% shielding just because shielding in the group game seems to have a much lower effect on my survivability than either ac lowering the average di and avoidance increaseing the number of misses. Sorry if its a bit incoherant im just finishing a 36 hour day.

[varutia]

460 AC was using your example of 3% shielding aug or a 25 ac aug then magnify it to max shielding and translate it to visable worn AC amount by increasing the number 1.6 times. I did the translation because visible AC amount seems to be what used most.

I did forget to minus the 45 DI from the minimum hit, but the point still stands that depending on content 35 percent shielding can possibly be more effective than 460 AC. Shielding is also the ONLY thing will reduce the max hit of the mob thus the lessen the impact of the spikes. More AC only lessen the chance of spike happening it does not completely prevent it.

If you raid, high AC gear typically will come with the tanking mods, so it is not hard to raid or don't raid heavily there likely will be time you consider tradeoffs, is 5 AC better than 1 shielding? Is your 3 shielding aug better than 15 ac 40 hps one?

Shielding does a stellar job on reducing the average incoming dps. I had a quick look at my old logs, it indicates 393 is the average hit for the Drachnids on me. Assume 70 damage per hit is saved by shielding, it means mobs would have hit me for 463 average and those shielding just saved me 15 percent of the incoming damage.

Efficiency is important, once you can tank comfortably in an area, efficiency just become name of the game. Once you got the point where adding 1000 AC does not do anything for you in terms of average dps, you should not really have too much problem with spikes for this particular mob anymore. I stand by my point where you need to make your choice based on the content you are fighting and what gear you got access to, rather than just a blanket statement AC is better than shielding.

Personally, if 1 shielding for 2 AC, sure, 1 shielding for 5 AC maybe, 1 shielding for 10 AC no way.

[Datzyoazz]

My personal experience...I joined a raiding guild not to long ago, before that i didnt have SHLD or AVD maxed, and to be honest I was getting raped in FC, and AG trying to OFF tank some of the trash. Having maxed SHLD before AVD, it made things "alot easier", I was seeing alot less spike dmg from mobs, and even tanked a aug mob after MT went down. I maxed AVD shortly after maxing SHLD, and didnt see much of a difference, so IMHOP SHLD > AVD....AC will come most of time when u max those 2 out, from what most of the knights in my guild who have raided for a long time have told me, go for a SHLD & AVD first, AC will come....just my 2 cents

[Brohg]

Shielding has dick all to do with less spike damage. How many 100s of AC did you also gain in the same period?

[varutia]

Shielding make spike smaller == less spike damage, it does not reduce the chance of spike happening.

[frocus]

Shieldings effect on spikes is insignificant your 70 damage a hit in ilsalin translates to 280 out of 4400 for a max round which is why brogh says it is insignificant on spikes youll do far better and see far more benefit with shielding when your ac is high enough to move the average di to a lower number which reduces the chances of spikes occuring. The exception to this is a few raid mobs scattered in mostly older content who have high DB and trivial DI.

[varutia]

Like I just said the importance of shielding is depending on the content you are fighting and ac level you already have. More AC makes shielding more effective, if losing 3 or 4 displayed ac and I gain a shielding, I will do that. Pretty much everything has a trade off point, where you set it is depend on you.