I've been asked a lot "What is the best way to gear my tank" - or "What are the percentages that I should be targeting". I'm asked this both in and out of game and no one really seems to have the answers. I've never had the answers either - I've just gone with what "felt" right. Apparently it's worked because people come to me for advice - yay!
Anyway - to combat my ignorance I've tried to figure out what kind of gearing solution will provide optimal "tankyness" (TM). What I have discovered, is that trying to figure out how to optimally gear a defensive tank sucks - not to fear, I do have results and information to share!
First I determined which stats I would be focusing on - since we're looking at a defensive tank that includes: Endurance, Defense, Shield, Absorb.
This became a problem as I started to examine PvP effectiveness, so I've seperated the categories into PvE and PvP. Many of the theories are the same, so I'll outline those here first.
Contents
General Info
Endurance -
Makes you harder to kill by giving you more life.
Defense -
Dodges/deflects attacks mitigating all damage. High Defense leads to spiky damage.
Shield -
Procs the absorb rating to mitigate a percentage of damage. High Shield leads to even damage.
Absorb -
Amount of damage absorbed when shield procs. High Absorb leads to even damage.
Terms
AC -
Advanced Class. Generic term for referring to all classes as a whole.
DPS -
Damage Per Second. The average amount of damage inflicted on any given 1 second period.
EDPS -
Effective Damage Per Second. I will use this to refer to the equation (DPS - MPS)
HPS -
Heals Per Second. The average amount of healing done on any given 1 second period.
MPS -
Mitigation Per Second. This is used to compare with DPS in calculations.
PvE -
Player Versus Environment. Any time a player is killing a NPC.
PvP -
Player Versus Player. Any time a player is killing another player.
TTK -
Time To Kill. How long it takes a player to die.
Time To Kill
The first thing I want to discuss is the TTK, which was the first thing that I looked at and what everything else is based from.
The first thing I did was break down the differences between the three tank classes (please forgive me for using republic terminology, I've tried to do the "one/two" thing but invariably I end up using the republic terms at some point. Guardian = Juggernaut, Shadow = Assassin, Vanguard = Bounty Hunter) in terms of Defense, Shield and Absorb. Each AC has unique skills that make these percentages completely unique to that class.
(One of the things that made all these calculations so difficult was the difference in ACs.)
I then determined (using the appropriate formulas) what each single point of gain would give each class in terms of actual percentages. My goal at this point was to use these percentages to find the obvious winner when it came to TTK and gear appropriately.
Normally I could set up a matrix and just compare one stat to the other as they increased to see what happened. Unfortunately with three stats that isn't as simple any longer - especially when each stat directly affects how each other stat functions. For example:
High Defense means you will dodge more attacks, rendering shield less "effective" because less attacks are making it through to proc the shield chance.
High Shield will make Absorb more useful because more attacks will proc the absorb percentage.
The inverse is also true with both stats, so comparing them individually was pointless. Instead I looked at each stat independently, assuming that with 0 points in any other stat (using only the base numbers for each class) what kind of effect will each stat give.
I was only slightly surprised with the results.
TTK Charts
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| Shadow TTK Chart |
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| JG TTK Chart |
 |
| Vanguard TTK Chart |
What the Charts Mean
One of the reasons we are measuring TTK rather than hard mitigation is because we want to look at the Endurance stat in addition to defensive stats. Endurance doesn't offer mitigation, instead it offers a larger health pool - we'll discuss how this works more in depth further on.
Each chart is similar with only slight differences. For Shadows Shield is pretty static purely because of their active shielding buff which ups the shield percentage by a hard amount. When this is factored in, adding more points to shielding does not have a large effect. In addition, Absorb has the highest effect for them than any other class.
Guardians have a high curve to the Defense stat, which means they get more benefit from it than any other. This is partly because they get almost no bonuses to any other stat, and in the end Defense is king when it comes to total mitigation ( when we start looking at big numbers anyway). We also see their absorb and shield are much closer than the Shadow because of that lack of bonus.
Vanguards have the most interesting table because their defense stat drops significantly. Note that the Endurance stat is not "more" useful, instead the defense stat is just that much "less" useful. This is because Vanguards start with such low defense and get almost not bonuses, while their shielding stats get significant bonuses. Overall increasing any defensive stats on a Vanguard all have lower benefit than for any other class. Which makes sense since they have the highest base mitigation values.
Baseline
Next to begin finding real numbers I needed a baseline to work from. I determined the baseline beginning with no defensive stats, then with minimal stats, and finally modified it for PvE and PvP damage "real" damage.
The Numbers
Endurance Baseline: 1600
Buffed Health Baseline: ~19300
DPS Baseline: 1000
Defense Baseline: By Class (7-16%)
Shield Baseline: By Class (24-35%)
Absorb Baseline: By Class (20-32%)
PvE Modifier: 80%
PvP Modifier: 20%
Guardian:
Average MPS (based on DPS): 181.28
Average PvE MPS: 145.02
Average PvP MPS: 36.256
Shadow:
Average MPS (based on DPS): 230.56
Average PvE MPS: 184.48
Average PvP MPS: 46.112
Vanguard:
Average MPS (based on DPS): 153.32
Average PvE MPS: 122.66
Average PvP MPS: 30.66
TTK with defense - 15.7% increase
TTK adjusted for PvE - 12.2% increase
TTK adjusted for PvP - 2.7% increase
The Explanation
I pulled the baseline endurance numbers from my characters with some mid-end game gear. I just wanted a reasonable calculation to look at for a base so I could test what kind of increase in TTK was coming.
The base defensive numbers are from a standard geared tank without any extra points in defensive skills. I wanted to use this as a baseline to compare against people who wear DPS gear and a shield generator and see what the actual difference in survivability was.
The PvP and PvE modifiers are pulled from averaged information on how much damage can actually be mitigated by defensive statistics. A while ago I ran all the PvP numbers HERE - recently I saw a post with compiled PvE Operations numbers on bosses which totaled up close to 80%. I've used that value here because I trust the person that came up with the numbers. If anyone has a better value to use please let me know and I can re-work the numbers by just punching that into the spreadsheet.
Calculations
WARNING MATH!
Health:
Base Health + ( Endurance * Bonus * 10)
Base Health = 2500 for each character
Base Endurance = 225 for each character
Bonus = 5% from buffs and X% from talents
MPS (mitigation per second):
( 1 - Defense% ) * Shield% * [ ( DPS * Modifier ) * Absorb% ] + [ ( DPS * Modifier ) * Defense% ]
Modifier = Adjusted PvP or PvE value for actual mitigateable damage
DPS = average damage per second
TTK:
Health / ( DPS - MPS )
This is just a very simple formula asking "how long will I live if I'm taking this much damage"
I was asked to provide a spreadsheet that would output TTK based on my calculations, you can find it here if you're interested:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkxlS0B-JaSKdElRQ0RjUzZxc3l0LW5obTVNR3dHTVE
Where do we go from here?
In the spirit of math I attempted to compare the numbers and come up with a formula showing the optimal increase of stats for each level and in each situation. I discovered this was beyond my skill set - I'm not a trained mathematician. Perhaps someone else can take my data and turn it into formulas, unfortunately that person is not me. As I mentioned comparing three values that depend on each other is difficult.
(Just fyi, if we assume that there are 800 skill points to be distributed, and each stat has to be compared to all the others ... that is 800 * 800 * 800 = 512,000,000 data points that would need to be compared to their counterparts to find the optimal distribution.)
So - instead of trying to find a perfect formula for all situations I decided to jump to the "real world" gear and see what I could see.
Optimal Gearing
Overall I've never been upset with the gearing on my tanking pieces, I've found them to be accurate to my own picture of what would be optimal at any given time. Though I have dumped all my accuracy over recent months in favor of other stats - having a bunch of accuracy on my gear made me assume that it was important (it is not). Campaign/Black Hole/War Hero gear is optimized very well and has almost no accuracy.
I'll be breaking the rest down in sections (one for each AC) and a separate section where I'll discuss my issues with trying to gear properly for PvP.
Cool Fact: 95% of all Campaign/War Hero gear is exactly the same between tank ACs, just swap the word "strength" with "aim" or "willpower".
The introduction of augments has made min/maxing so easy for Tank ACs that there really isn't a reason not to do it any longer. Adding augments is the single most effective way to bring your stats in alignment with optimal MPS output. For PvE the only time you would need to swap mods/enhancements is to pick up something with no accuracy and more defensive stats on it. Since end game gear doesn't have accuracy any longer there is no need to swap mods.
Endurance and PvE TTK
There is no single way to increase TTK faster than by stacking Endurance. No defensive stat, no matter where you swap them in or out passes the effectiveness of stacking Endurance to keep you alive longer.
With that being said - once you start adding in healing this is no longer the case.
Tanks die when healers HPS (heals per second) can't match the DPS output. Stacking MPS lowers DPS which makes HPS more effective. Once HPS matches or exceeds DPS - MPS then stacking endurance will be more effective than adding any other defensive stat. Since this threshold changes on every fight and is largely unknown stacking as much MPS as possible is generally the best plan.
When this might become important, is when you are trying out new fights and are unsure what kind of DPS output to expect. Then you might be better of stacking Endurance, which will allow your healers to leave you "unhealed" longer without you dying - thereby allowing your group to learn mechanics and progress farther in fights without a tank suddenly dying because a healer was busy doing something else.
Optimal Augments
I'm not sure why augments were designed how they were, but they are definitely the worst design for tanks that I could think of.
Crit/Surge/Power/Primary Stat augments all have +Endurance as their secondary stat
Def/Shield/Aborb/Endurance augments all have +Power as their secondary stat
Does this not make sense to the rest of you? I can understand that they didn't want to give people +Crit and +Power on the same augment, but why are they giving tanks +Power? The minuscule increase in damage gained does not make up for the huge loss in Endurance that we potentially could have gotten.
This is one of the main reasons that I've had so much trouble nailing down optimal gearing for PvP.
Shield Rating
When looking at the gear in the game you don't have many options for swapping mods when it comes to tanking gear. When looking at mods you have 2 options:
End + Absorb
End + Defense
So there is absolutely no way to increase shield rating from modifications.
Similarly with Enhancements you have two options:
End + Shield + Absorb
End + Shield + Defense
So there is no way to limit your shield rating in favour of other stats because you are required to take shield rating to get any other type of stat. This leads to shield rating being the only static stat on all end game gear for tanks. You are required to take X amount of shield rating.
There are a few minor differences in the modifications - for example you can sacrifice endurance to gain a bit more secondary stat, or sacrifice some secondary stat to gain more endurance. If you truly want to min/max your MPS rating then you will find the opportunities to sacrifice endurance for defensive stats. Just remember what I said about Endurance and TTK - there is no way to increase your TTK higher than by stacking endurance.
For my purposes I believe Endurance is a key component for tanks and I did examine places where I could give up (or get) endurance on certain mods - I never found it to be worthwhile to change them out.
The Vanguard/PowerTech
Tanking Set: Supercommando
Vanguards are the most heavily shield dependant class. Since they have such low base defense values the amount of benefit they gain per point is drastically reduced. Their gear is very well optimized, only lacking shield stats but keeping everything else relatively balanced - we see this when it comes to augments, they use all three types of defensive augments whereas the other classes focus on one with a few of a second type.
Stat breakdown is based on a Vanguard in full campaign gear with Black Hole MK-1 Earpiece and MK-2 Implants.
Relics are a great way to customize stats, and for Vanguards using a War Hero Relic of Serenity (+113 Defense) and a Campaign Relic of Shield Amplification (+91 absorb rating averaged over duration) is the way to go. The shield amplification relic actually gives more benefit if you are being attacked by multiple targets since the limit is duration and not charges.
For this gear, optimal augments are:
8 Advanced Shield Augment 22
2 Advanced Redoubt Augment 22
4 Advanced Absorb Augment 22
Buffed Stats: [bracketed numbers are points invested]
Health: 23851
Defense: [352] 18.41 % (2% from set bonus)
Shield: [690] 57.08 %
Absorb: [465] 56.39 % (+8% with defense screen in combat +3.25% avg from shield proc relic - total: ~%67.6)
TTK Increase over base: 179
%
MPS Increase: 322%
These percentages are listed to give you a goal for gearing. Obviously lower tiered armor will have lower values, but the ratio between the values should stay roughly similar.
% of total point budget
Defense: 23.3%
Shield: 45.7%
Absorb: 30.8%
The Shadow/Assassin
Tanking Set: Survivor
Shadows have an active shield buff that adds 15% shield rating on top of their geared values. This lets them more easily surpass soft caps (read: diminishing returns) and invest less points in shield to get the same type of benefit. This makes Absorption more important for them because it has more base effect due to their buff.
Shadows also have the largest base defense between all tanks allowing them to reach higher percentages and get more benefit per point of defense. This allows them to be the most balanced with point distribution and still keep their percentages in the optimal places.
Stat breakdown is based on a Shadow in full campaign gear with Black Hole MK-1 Earpiece and Implants.
Relics are a great way to customize stats, and for Shadows using a War Hero Relic of Serenity (+113 Defense) and a Campaign Relic of Shield Amplification (+91 shield rating averaged over duration) is the way to go. Alternatively Shadows could sub in a second War Hero Relic for the increased Defense. This is purely because their buff to shield rating is less useful against multiple targets and the shield relic is more useful against multiple targets. Subbing in a defense relic gives approximately the same overall TTK values with a change of about ~0.5% MPS.
For this gear, optimal augments are:
10 Advanced Redoubt Augment 22
4 Advanced Absorb Augment 22
Buffed Stats: [bracketed numbers are points invested]
Health: 23840
Defense: [492] 29.64 %
Shield: [546] 44.91 % (+15% from Buff +5% to buff from set bonus - total: ~60%)
Absorb: [481] 57.02 % (+3.25% avg from shield proc relic - total: ~%60)
TTK Increase over base: 177
%
MPS Increase: 238%
These percentages are listed to give you a goal for gearing. Obviously lower tiered armor will have lower values, but the ratio between the values should stay roughly similar.
% of total point budget
Defense: 36%
Shield:
32.3%
Absorb: 31.6%
The Guardian/Juggernaut
Tanking Set: War Leader
Guardians begin with the lowest shielding stats of all other ACs and therefore end up with the lowest overall stats. This doesn't mean they are less effective, this analysis does not take everything in to account - it does mean they end up with the lowest overall defensive statistics.
When it comes to stats Guardians are balanced quite similarly with Shadows - the only major difference is the absorb rating is less useful for them because of the lack of bonus shield rating.
Stat breakdown is based on a Guardian in full campaign gear with Black Hole MK-1 Earpiece and Implants.
Relics are a great way to customize stats, and for Guardians using a War Hero Relic of Serenity (+113 Defense) and a the Matrix Cube M7-Y3 seem to give the best stats. For the other ACs you've seen the use of a Shield relic to boost shield rating, Shadows don't have access to a tanking Matrix cube and the added defense rating for Vanguards is nearly useless since they get more effect from shields. The reason the Guardian is saddled with a cube is part personal preference (higher other stats), partly because they are less reliant on shielding and partly because it significantly raises their TTK (added endurance). Optionally you could use a Campaign Shield amplification relic which would boost their absorb %3.25 overall.
For this gear, optimal augments are:
11 Advanced Redoubt Augment 22
3 Advanced Absorb Augment 22
Buffed Stats: [bracketed numbers are points invested]
Health: 23,321
(guardians are the only class that lacks a 3% endurance boost)
Defense: [531] 28.41 %
Shield: [546] 48.91 %
Absorb: [454] 51.95 %
TTK Increase over base: 164
%
MPS Increase: 257%
These percentages are listed to give you a goal for gearing. Obviously lower tiered armor will have lower values, but the ratio between the values should stay roughly similar.
% of total point budget
Defense: 35.6%
Shield:
34.6%
Absorb: 29.6%
Tanks in PvP
This has been a hot topic since players have started "tanking" during PvP content. There are so many different ways to spec and gear your characters that finding the "optimal" way is basically impossible. Since each person plays their character differently or sees their role in PvP differently they will gear with that in mind.
The primary discussion between Tanks in PvP is whether to put on defensive gear, or offensive gear. Many tanks stay in their tanking stance to use Guard, but wear DPS gear because they feel that putting out damage helps their team better than soaking up damage.
The opposite is also true, many are trying to optimize their TTK while sacrificing damage output because they believe that is what helps their team most.
I'm not here to lay this argument to rest (unfortunately) since I'm torn between the two sides of the argument and personally mix in some DPS gear with my tanking gear to get optimal use from my character. In PvE your role is purely to tank, you have other players filling in the DPS role. In PvP sometimes you will need to do damage to help your team win, and at other times you'll need to become a wall that the other team has to break down. To fill both of those roles requires some finesse when it comes to itemization.
Maximizing Defensive Utility
You'll be safe following the same guidelines for PvE gearing and using the same augments to maximize your potential. I didn't dig through six more spreadsheets to determine optimal Defensive stats (read: real numbers) that you get from end game PvP gear because I didn't think it was worthwhile. In the end, the stats will look similar (just slightly lower) to the PvE stats. I think for the Guardian it was a 1% difference (lower) in all three categories.
To Mitigate or not to Mitigate
Because of the brutally steep damage curve in PvP defensive stats lose a huge portion of their effectiveness. For those that don't know the reason you can read here:
http://www.tankingtor.com/2012/03/guides-shielddefense-and-armor.html to see how damage is calculated and what types of damage can actually be mitigated. For my purposes I've used a 20% modifier for actual damage received able to be mitigated. For some classes this is closer to 30% and for some classes this is effectively 0%.
Overall what does optimizing defensive stats get you in PvP?
For a Guardian:
TTK Increase over base: 110
%
MPS Increase: 255%
Yes, that is only a 10% increase in overall survivability. So ... what is 10% to you?
The MPS Dilemma
So why does mitigation make sense? Because PvP is not about straight up 1v1 killing another player, it's a team sport. Being a team sport you aren't on your own, and neither are they.
The MPS Dilemma starts here: How much mitigation makes a difference when you are being healed?
Because you will be replenishing your Health over time we can remove absolute health as a limiting factor for TTK. What makes the difference now is how much HPS you are getting - if your HPS > DPS then you will live forever. If your HPS < DPS you will eventually die.
What makes you live longer? MPS
MPS becomes an exponential increase to survivability. For each second you are receiving heals you are mitigating more damage. For each second you are mitigating you are able to obtain more heals.
 |
| Showing TTK vs HPS - mitigated and non mitigated - DPS 1200 |
The above graph assumes 1200 DPS, 90 MPS, 20k health. HPS is increasing along the bottom. I used 1200 dps to prevent the "undying threshold" where HPS passes EDPS (effective DPS).
I wanted to show the above graph for two reasons. You can see the exponential increase in TTK when coupled with MPS and heals and how it climbs much sooner and more rapidly than it's counterpart.
The "damage required" curve looks exactly the same. So in the middle, when it would have taken 50k damage to kill an unmitigated player it would take 62k to kill a mitigated player. At the end of the curve the damage difference is in the millions.
 |
| Showing TTK vs HPS - mitigated and non mitigated - DPS 2000 |
The above graph is the same thing but with a higher DPS component. You can more easily see the separation from mitigated and non mitigated damage. Because the TTK happens sooner here, the separation does not grow as large. Which is of course the downfall of the MPS curve - if you aren't receiving enough healing the 10% increase in survivability is only 10%.
Endurance for PvP TTK
As I've mentioned a few times, the single best way to increase your TTK is to stack endurance. In a direct death situation (no heals) nothing else will raise your TTK as far or as fast as stacking endurance.
By removing all your defensive augments and stacking Fortitude augments direction you (as a Guardian) will lose ~8% MPS and gain 13.5% survivability. Which means your TTK moves from a 10% increase to a 23.5% increase. That's a huge difference for very little in stats. Classes with endurance boosts will see an even greater benefit.
The really cool thing about stacking Endurance with your Defensive stats, is that every point of Health you add is also added to your mitigation pool, so you get the benefit of having more health, and the benefit of living longer to mitigate more damage.
In over healing situations (healers can more than make up for the DPS with HPS) having extra endurance makes the job of the healers easier because they have to focus less on you as a target. The more health you have to soak with the less often you'll need to receive a heal.
We all know in real combat a healer isn't putting out specific HPS on you every second, he's putting a big heal on you every once in a while to keep your health topped off. Potentially having a larger health pool will allow that healer to get a needed heal off before you die - which is what we all hope for isn't it?
Damage for TTK
Yes, I'll discuss this topic even though it's incredibly hard to quantify.
The premise - dead people don't do damage.
Which is a good premise, and accurate.
I've actually been seeing this a lot more in Warzones lately. Teams of high DPS output groups are completely rolling over top of any other type of composition. Partly this is due to their co-ordination and stacking their damage on single targets. Partly it's due to the fact that ... dead people don't do damage.
When you look at the direct numbers, it isn't even close.
Lets say as a tanking character you put out 600 DPS. A damage focused character puts out 1000 DPS.
You both fight the same damage spec'd opponent (~16k health).
In the end the damage focused character kills them very rapidly (16 seconds) and you struggle along for a while (26 seconds).
The damage character rests for the extra time and overall you have potentially taken an extra 10.5k damage. With optimal mitigation you would need to be fighting for 126 extra seconds to make up for that 10.5k damage.
But wait - lets flip that equation.
(Please note that none of these calculations are taking armor in to account, that will play a larger role when the equation is flipped here and looked at from a DPS trying to kill a tank. They don't have the same armor rating or hard mitigation values - which generally gives a tank an edge when dealing with a DPS character)
Now we're looking at it from the other side. The Damage opponent hasn't changed, they're both spec'd similarly and do 1000 DPS so they kill each other at basically the same time ~16 seconds.
The DPS character fighting the tank (mitigation, 20k health) has a harder time and struggles along for 22 seconds before killing him.
The tank doesn't kill the damage character (close though), but has lasted an extra 5 seconds. This is standing toe to toe and just duking it out, not including any delaying tactics the tank may posess. THIS is why there is a difference in tanking stats and mitigation and pure DPS numbers. 5 seconds is a long time when you are trying to defend a node waiting for help.
Essentially you have to decide what kind of role you are looking to play. If you're going for an aggressive attacking role, then DPS is the key to winning. If you are playing a defensive role, then it doesn't help you as much.
Quit Rambling and tell me what to do
Ok then. I know you're tired of me talking about the benefits, so here is what I am planning to do. I don't want to be completely useless in the damage department, nor do I want to give up all my defensive power - so I'll be working down the middle a bit.
I primarily PvP on my Jedi Guardian, so what I say will relate directly to him. You can use my goals as a guide for yourself to come up with the best overall gearing that fits your own playstyle. Remember - I told you that there isn't a one size fits all equation to "be the best". I can tell you what the optimal mitigation values are, but I can't tell that having the most mitigation will necessarily make you the best player in PvP.
I will actually be following my "Endurance for TTK" heading and stacking that to increase my TTK rather than augmenting for defense.
I'm not sure about the rest of the tank sets, but on my Battlemaster War Leader set there was an ample amount of surge - which I supplemented with Crit/Surge implants (Vindicators). This has given me the ability to hit some nice 2.5 -3k crit numbers. I don't want to lose those, since they really help in a pinch.
My plan is to fill up on War Hero War Leader (tanking gear) with a Bulwark earpiece and implant, and to sub in one Pummeler implant (Surge/Power).
Then I'm going to stack 4 Surge augments (this brings me to ~66%). Stacking surge augments actually increases my TTK by stacking endurance for me passively. Remember when I was saying that augments are weirdly itemized? Well I can use that to my advantage. I actually think BW might have considered tanks using augments to power up for damage instead of swapping out main gear pieces.
I'll be stacking 7 Might augments (Main Stat + Endurance) for the added damage and crit boost, and in my last 3 spots I'm putting pure Fortitude augments to up my Endurance just a bit more (these boost my power a bit as well).
I'm debating on swapping out some of the might (or Fortitude) augments for Crit augments instead. My crit will sit at 20% with what I'm estimating currently, which is 5% lower than where it is now. I'll have to play a bit to see if that makes a big difference. If it does I'll make the decision on where to swap out augments at that point.
Last I've swapped out the mod in my headgear and the enhancement in my leggings for the mod and enhancement from a second set of boots. The boots have defense rather than absorb on them, so I'm swapping ~40 absorb in favou
r of defense. This works for me because my stats were a bit out of what by not using Augments to supplement. Shadows would want to do something similar, Vanguards are probably fine with the unmodified gear.
I checked if I would benefit swapping out more absorb, but I would not, so just the one extra modification for optimal output. If you're not planning to augment for damage/endurance don't worry about swapping gear pieces, you'll make up for it with your augments.
So my target stats (Guardian) are:
Damage (Pri): 658.9-820.9
Bonus damage: 334.9
Crit: 20.69 %
Surge: 66.12 %
Health: 21,673
Defense: 23.87 %
Shield: 46.34 %
Absorb: 46.37
%
Please understand that I'm not saying this is the only way to gear your Guardian, this is how I'm planning to gear mine based on all the above information. My goal here was to help you understand what the difference is between gearing one way or another.
Conclusion
Do what makes you the most effective. If base mitigation and high DPS output is what makes you happy don't let anyone tell you that you're doing it wrong. If you're trying to maximize your survivability and optimize your MPS, go for it.
After playing for a while you start to see how things work without having to worry about the math, you'll get a "feel" for what kind of mitigation you're getting on a class by class basis. Target classes that you have the advantage and stay away from classes that you have the disadvantage. Sometimes it's as easy as that.
