Are Brewmasters getting gimped with Paragon points?

[nerf shaman]

I may not understand how DR works (but have a feeling for it), I do understand how math works though. The way you just twisted 1% vs 2% into 50% (not of total, but of the difference, while we're talking about total) ... gaaaah! I know it's all about putting the numbers and signs in the manner you feel best suits your agenda, but I wrote my note (believe it or not) WITHOUT any agenda

Unfortunately, you are the one twisting the numbers due to your inability to understand decreases in incoming damage. No amount of winky faces in your message can change that.

Lets pretend 2 tanks (tank A and tank B) are currently tanking a monster (monster X). Monster X has an attack that deals 100 damage per second. Tank A is a tank that has been balanced around having high mitigation, and has 98% damage reduction. Tank B is a tank that has been balanced around having low mitigation, and has 8% damage reduction.

They both tank monster X:
Tank A: 100 dps turns into 2 dtps
Tank B: 100 dps turns into 92 dtps

Lets pretend that tank A and B are perfectly balanced around these numbers, because tank B has ridiculous self healing and a huge hp pool, while tank A has neither.

They both gain 1% damage reduction (tank A 98 to 99, tank B 8 to 9)

They both tank monster X:
Tank A: 100 dps turns into 1 dtps
Tank B: 100 dps turns into 91 dtps

What happens? Tank A sees a HUGE survivability increase. The damage he is taking is cut in half, and it is very noticeable. Completely busted mitigation increase. Tank B barely feels the buff. It is a buff, but a barely noticeable drop in the bucket.

If you've ever played D3, scenarios like this were common in that game. It really made me appreciate minor mitigation upgrades like .1%, because it would actually feel significant.

[Saverem]

I think it's about the same. The more armor you have the greater the DR on armor mitigation it gives. So say, if you have 2k armor, then 200 points give you more armor mitigation % per point than if you have 6k armor. However, 6k armor will give you 600 armor bonus rather than 200.

600 armor bonus at 6k armor should give about the same armor mitigation % as 200 points at 2k armor.

So it sort of balances out.


With that said, they should have just given the tanks a flat 5% less damage taken. Or 5% less physical damage taken if they don't want to have spell damage effected.

[Hinalover]

Ok I might as well throw some math out showing that the 10% Armor is lackluster for a most tanks, but it benefits Brewmasters more than other tanks.

First thing first is how armor is calculated

armor / (armor + K)

K is a value that Blizzard has assigned that is based on the level of the mob or another player (attacker) against the player (defender). For argument sake the value of K for level 110 - 113 is as followed:

110 - 7390
111 - 7648
112 - 7906
113 - 8164

As an example, on my Windwalker, I currently have 2258 armor. That means if a Boss level (level 113) mob melee's me; I will reduce the damage by

2258 / (2258 + 8164) = 21.6657%

Now if I switch over to Brewmaster, without changing any gear, I would have 2597 armor. This is because BrM have a baseline 15% armor bonus that was adding in 7.1 I want to say. If the same mob hits me now, I would mitigate

2597 / (2597 + 8164) = 24.1334%

This is all before Stagger takes over. Now the armor bonus from the 35th trait is additive (Llarold confirmed this to me). Meaning instead of increasing armor by 15%, it now increases our armor by 25% So that means my armor once I unlock my 35th trait will be 2823. Meaning I will mitigate

2823 / (2823 + 8164) = 25.694%

Or an increase of 1.56% armor reduction

Now let's look at my druid alt. Out of bear form, my druid currently has 2118 armor. However in bear form, she currently has 6354 armor. This is due to a 200% bonus to my armor.

6354 / (6354 + 8164) = 43.766%

Since the 35th trait is additive, that means she would have 210% with the 35th trait. That means my new armor value would be 6566 if she did have the 35th trait.

6566 / (6566 + 8164) = 44.5757%

Or an increase of 0.8097% armor reduction

Now let's take a look at what a druid with the EXACT same gear my monk has

2258 * (1 + 200%) = 6774 armor pre-35th trait
2258 * (1 + 210%) = 7000 armor post-35th trait

6774 / (6774 + 8164) = 45.3474%
7000 / (7000 + 8164) = 46.162%

Or an increase of 0.8146% armor reduction

Meaning the 10% bonus to armor is only about a 1% damage reduction for all tanks, but Brewmasters benefit from it more than other tanks. The only thing making it not completely worthless is the bonus to stamina and damage output it provides.

[procne]

Ok I might as well throw some math out showing that the 10% Armor is lackluster for a most tanks, but it benefits Brewmasters more than other tanks.

First thing first is how armor is calculated

armor / (armor + K)

K is a value that Blizzard has assigned that is based on the level of the mob or another player (attacker) against the player (defender). For argument sake the value of K for level 110 - 113 is as followed:

110 - 7390
111 - 7648
112 - 7906
113 - 8164

...

Meaning the 10% bonus to armor is only about a 1% damage reduction for all tanks, but Brewmasters benefit from it more than other tanks. The only thing making it not completely worthless is the bonus to stamina and damage output it provides.

Thank you for the armor formula, couldn't easily find it on the net.

Also, are you sure druid's 35th rank (Ursoc's bond) increases bonus armor from bear form from 200% to 210%, instead giving just 10% to all armor? Abilities that increase armor by percentage in bear form (ironfur) increase it by the percentage of overall armor, not just from the base before bear form.

[keqe]

I don't think it is additive. I checked my armor at 34 traits and 35 traits back when I got it to see how much DR I got from it.

2647

2912 armor

Which I had in my notepad. And 2912/2647 is 1.10011. So actual 10% increase.

Resulting in 2.39256% damage reduction against 113 level target.

[Yxiomel]

Thank you for the armor formula, couldn't easily find it on the net.

Also, are you sure druid's 35th rank (Ursoc's bond) increases bonus armor from bear form from 200% to 210%, instead giving just 10% to all armor? Abilities that increase armor by percentage in bear form (ironfur) increase it by the percentage of overall armor, not just from the base before bear form.

hinalover is not correct about that. I have the 35th on my druid, and armour with my weapon equipped is equal to armour without it equipped *1.05 * 1.1 (5% boost due to Iron Claws trait, 10% boost due to 35% trait).

I get 45.9% DR without the trait; 48.3% DR with. That is an additional 2.4 percentage points of DR, and a 4.4% reduction in damage taken.

If i use my base armour and pretend I'm a BrM:
2203 armour * 1.15 for their passive = 2533 armour.
So I get: 23.7% DR without; 25.4% DR with.
That is a 1.7 percentage point increase in DR, and a reduction in damage taken of 2.2%.

[Deleted]

Here are two graphs depicting the additional PhysDR from armor from getting Trait35 (assuming multiplicative) and the (diminishing) marginal utility from the same trait.

http://imgur.com/a/Wj0jc

http://imgur.com/a/LmmLj

So yeah, the marginal utility diminishes with higher armor but as long it doesn't turn negative, it still means that the higher your armor the higher your benefit.

Calculations were made for target level 113 (8164).

Edit:

And just if you're wondering - these are the formulas I used (feel free to tell me how wrong I am, since it's quite late):

Damage taken %=(1-(1,1*armor/(1,1*armor+K)))/(1-(armor/(armor+K)))

Marginal utility==(-1*(1,1*(1,1*armor+K)-1,1*1,1*armor)/(1,1*armor+K)^2)*(1-armor/(armor+K))-(1-1,1*armor/(1,1*armor+K))*(-1*(K/(armor+K)^2))/(1-armor/(armor+K))^2

Enjoy this one - couldn't be bothered to clean it up ;-).

[Hinalover]

I don't think it is additive. I checked my armor at 34 traits and 35 traits back when I got it to see how much DR I got from it.



Which I had in my notepad. And 2912/2647 is 1.10011. So actual 10% increase.

Resulting in 2.39256% damage reduction against 113 level target.

ok. I admit fault on this and may have been some communication issues with Llarold when we talked about this. Like I indicated, I don't quite have my Brewmaster 35th trait YET (about 2/3rds between 34 and 35 currently), so I could not double check my math on live.

Edit:

Ok I JUST got my 35th trait and you all are correct where it goes from 15% bonus armor baseline to 26.5% bonus armor.

[Deleted]

Unfortunately, you are the one twisting the numbers due to your inability to understand decreases in incoming damage. No amount of winky faces in your message can change that.

Ok, prove me wrong with numbers.

What happens? Tank A sees a HUGE survivability increase.

Aaaand failed, as you just pointed out yourself - it's a FEELING compared to previous status.

Nevermind though - I wrote the same as you anyway. If you decided not to go personal, you might actually read it there. The 10% armour increase for a bear with more/less constant double ironfur is in whocares land (quote self: "The 35th trait can go to hell for a bear really"). It is however some increase for a BMonk and I am in the process of spending AP on it. It's less an increase than a few ilvls on some of the trinkets, but well ... it's always something.

[Deleted]

Ok, prove me wrong with numbers.



Aaaand failed, as you just pointed out yourself - it's a FEELING compared to previous status.

Nevermind though - I wrote the same as you anyway. If you decided not to go personal, you might actually read it there. The 10% armour increase for a bear with more/less constant double ironfur is in whocares land (quote self: "The 35th trait can go to hell for a bear really"). It is however some increase for a BMonk and I am in the process of spending AP on it. It's less an increase than a few ilvls on some of the trinkets, but well ... it's always something.

I don't even understand how you can keep saying that, I explained the numbers to you, even with 2 stacks of ironfur the relative damage reduction granted by the 35th trait is better for guardian drood than for monk. Because, YES armor does have diminishing return, the more you have, the less %damage reduction any additional point grants you. But the magic is that the more damage reduction you have, the better one additional % damage reduction is. You have 0 armor, you take a 100 base melee hit : 100 damage. You get 10k armor : that's 57.5% damage reduction so the melee hits you for 42.5. This armor did give you 57.5% damage reduction. Now you get another 10k armor. That's 73% damage reduction, you took 27 damage. Now let's consider you have 1000hp. With 0 armor, 10 hits and you're dead, with 10k armor that's roughly 23.5 melee hit [1000/42.5] (which is 57.5% more than the first situation : your EHP have been multiplied by 2.35 . With 20k armor, you'll need this time 1000/27 which is 37 hits.
So going from 0 to 10k armor gave you 13.5 melee hits before you're dead and going from 10k armor to 20k gave you ..... also 13.5 more melee hits before you die.

It's as if the DR part of the calcul of armor is needed because the value of an additional damage reduction % is not linear (from 0 to 1% it's 1%, from 98 to 99% it's 50%). It is simple, I don't even know why everyone seem to not understand it : any armor point you get gives you 1/7.39% (so 0.135%) more EHP (effective hit point).
At this point you could argue that yes, due to the nature of stagger monk tend to already have a really high EHP thus making everything even out but since stagger is more "take the hit now, suffer from it later", it's not that much of a dream.

[Will]

Unfortunately, you are the one twisting the numbers due to your inability to understand decreases in incoming damage. No amount of winky faces in your message can change that.

Lets pretend 2 tanks (tank A and tank B) are currently tanking a monster (monster X). Monster X has an attack that deals 100 damage per second. Tank A is a tank that has been balanced around having high mitigation, and has 98% damage reduction. Tank B is a tank that has been balanced around having low mitigation, and has 8% damage reduction.

They both tank monster X:
Tank A: 100 dps turns into 2 dtps
Tank B: 100 dps turns into 92 dtps

Lets pretend that tank A and B are perfectly balanced around these numbers, because tank B has ridiculous self healing and a huge hp pool, while tank A has neither.

They both gain 1% damage reduction (tank A 98 to 99, tank B 8 to 9)

They both tank monster X:
Tank A: 100 dps turns into 1 dtps
Tank B: 100 dps turns into 91 dtps

What happens? Tank A sees a HUGE survivability increase. The damage he is taking is cut in half, and it is very noticeable. Completely busted mitigation increase. Tank B barely feels the buff. It is a buff, but a barely noticeable drop in the bucket.

If you've ever played D3, scenarios like this were common in that game. It really made me appreciate minor mitigation upgrades like .1%, because it would actually feel significant.

That's a terrible example because a tank taking 98% reduced damage is already taking such a paltry amount that a further halving, however impressive sounding in paper, makes an utterly insignificant difference in practice. If a poor man with a bank balance of £10 increases his money balance by 100%,he's still poor at the end of the day despite double being a large difference

Tanks with low armour gain more benefit from armour because they have a bigger weakness to plug. At the end of the day it's about reducing incoming damage to a level that is sustainably manageable by your healer - reducing beyond the point is fantastic but there are diminishing returns on how far your damage intake can be reduced beyond the point where the healer is basically half afk and still keeping you alive. Therefore armour has the greatest benefit when it's reducing damage intake from dangerous levels to safer levels. Your example of reducing DPS from silly low to even more silly low is in the mega DR category

- - - Updated - - -

OK Morm so we established that armour provides a linear EH increase but there are still diminishing returns on armour in the sense that, from a healing perspective, your damage intake/sustainability surpasses manageable levels and becomes increasingly redundant. Bears already can reach absurd levels of physical damage reduction. Monks cannot. Therefore extra armour on a monk is arguably going to save your healer a lot of stress than, say, a bear who already has absurdly reduced physical damage intake doing the same thing. Remember, it's not just the damage you're taking on the meters that matters ; a much more important consideration is how the healer is able to manage your damage intake.

[Deleted]

Two aspects meet here.
1. Math, which says that it doesn't fk'n matter because we're talking so small numbers they will HARDLY make any difference (2?3?5% less physical dmg taken for 90% of all the tank players will make no difference, as their own actions have a much bigger impact than that and I dare say at least 90% of the playerbase doesn't execute all their actions correctly at all times anyway).
2. Feeling of the player, which suggests a BM MIGHT feel A SLIGHT improvement to his survivability from those 10% armour, while a Bear or even a BDK will not, as the improvement will be lost compared to previous experience (without the 35th trait).

Compared to the times when your Mark of Heavy Hide procs (even without further trinkets/boosts) this whole discussion is irrelevant from the performance perspective.

It can be however yet another "proof" for the disgruntled monk player-base, who find reason after reason to loathe this class. Same in BM forum, same in WW, same in MW. Sad panda.

[Llarold]

Therefore extra armour on a monk is arguably going to save your healer a lot of stress

Therein lies the problem with Tank prestige in general. Your raid will notice if your best DPS suddenly starts doing 5% more damage. Your raid will notice if your best healer suddenly starts doing 5% more HPS. Tanks typically only take half of their damage from physical sources, and the first point of prestige is slightly less than 2% physical damage reduction.

So, will healers and the raid notice if their MT suddenly starts taking .8% less damage? Almost certainly not.

[Deleted]

Therein lies the problem with Tank prestige in general. Your raid will notice if your best DPS suddenly starts doing 5% more damage. Your raid will notice if your best healer suddenly starts doing 5% more HPS. Tanks typically only take half of their damage from physical sources, and the first point of prestige is slightly less than 2% physical damage reduction.

So, will healers and the raid notice if their MT suddenly starts taking .8% less damage? Almost certainly not.

Supposedly every additional point into the prestige still grants 0.5% damage and 0.75% stam so in the long term it's still strong but it sure is a bit underwhelming compared to the other roles.

[Llarold]

Supposedly every additional point into the prestige still grants 0.5% damage and 0.75% stam so in the long term it's still strong but it sure is a bit underwhelming compared to the other roles.

That is correct, and that alone makes each point worth gaining. I am frustrated by a system in which the hidden rewards are powerful and the clearly-labeled rewards are imperceptible.

[stross01]

That is correct, and that alone makes each point worth gaining. I am frustrated by a system in which the hidden rewards are powerful and the clearly-labeled rewards are imperceptible.

I don't like that a lot of abilities ignore armor anyway.

Maybe dps and healer traits should only work in about 30% of situations.

[Tech614]

That is correct, and that alone makes each point worth gaining. I am frustrated by a system in which the hidden rewards are powerful and the clearly-labeled rewards are imperceptible.

Honestly, tanks should get 5% DR and .5% DR for every point past 35 if they wanted it to be in line with the rest.

Won't happen because it makes it harder for them to balance tank damage, so the least they could do is add 5% damage to the initial 35th trait to go along with the .5% we get for each one after.

[Targom]

Its not my math, its the way blizz has armor scaling. Before BC, going from 6k-7k armor yielded MORE damage reduction then going from 2k-3k. Don't ask me how, I didn't do maths back then. Then blizz made a change to armor scaling so that every single stat point of armor was equal to every single other stat point of armor. Sure, going from 5k-5.5k is a 10% increase in armor stat, whereas 50k-50.5k is only a 1% increase in armor stat, but that 500 armor will yield the exact same damage reduction over time. Armor is not like crit, haste, or anything else here, it uses a wierd scaling model.

I think the point is the paragon is a 10% armor increase not a flat 1k armor increase, sure gaining 1k armor at 2k vs 6k armor is the same damage reduction now, but since it is percentage based and Brewmaster doesn't have the armor values of other tanks they receive less armor from the paragon points. So with your examples other tanks are gaining a higher armor number and since the relative value of armor doesn't get lower as you get more armor they are getting more value from the point.

[Llarold]

since the relative value of armor doesn't get lower as you get more armor

That's not true, nor has it ever been true.

[Deleted]

As long as paragon points still gives hp and damage for tanks they are all good still.