Diminishing Returns on Unbreakable Armor

[superflystud]

Has anyone else done the math on this? As armor grants less and less mitigation, so, too, will UA. This also devalues the UA Glyph in it's current 3.0.8 incarnation as your gear improves.

Now, let's say a decent-geared DK tank has 15k Armor.

Since a tank will be in Frost Presence, they will really have 15k * 1.8 = 27k armor, or 61.87% damage reduction.
With unglyphed UA up, they will have 15k * 2.05 = 30.75k armor, or 64.89% damage reduction.
With glyphed UA up, they will have 15k * 2.2 = 33k armor, or 66.48% damage reduction.

At this gear level, the glyph only provides 1.59% extra DR.

UA itself only gives a 3% damage reduction. Even with the parry gained (assuming 900 Str, thats 22.5 parry rating, or about .5% parry chance) thats what, 5.5% parry chance and 3% physical damage reduction? Even glyphed that's only 4.6% damage reduction, or about 10% reduction from only physical damage.

Let's compute for a worse tank, say 12.5k Armor.

Base reduction w/ Frost Presence, 12.5 * 1.8 = 22.5k armor, or 57.49% damage reduction.
Unglyphed UA, 12.5 * 2.05 = 25.625k armor, or 60.64% damage reduction.
Glyphed UA, 12.5 * 2.2 = 27.5k, or 62.31% damage reduction.

Even Glyphed, that's only 4.8% damage reduction.

Now for a better tank, say 17.5k armor.

Base reduction w/ Frost Presence, 17.5 * 1.8 = 31.5k armor, or 65.44% damage reduction.
Unglyphed UA, 17.5 * 2.05 = 35.875k armor, or 68.32% damage reduction.
Glyphed UA, 17.5 * 2.2 = 38.5k, or 69.83% damage reduction.

Base here is 2.88%, Glyphed is 4.39%

So, compared to fully Glyphed Bone Shield and Vampiric Blood;

Vampiric Blood gives 15% of you health (scales positively with HP) and grants 35% extra healing (set value, scales with hps) for 20 seconds (30 glyphed).

Bone Shield reduces the damage of the next 4 (6 glyphed) attacks by 20%, scales VERY well with avoidance.

The benefits of both BS and VB apply to magical damage, while UA does not.

So, the question: what would be a good fix for this?

I'm thinking that reverting the Glyph to something similar to its previous form:

Glyph of Unbreakable Armor
Your Unbreakable Armor ability grants an additional 5% Parry chance.

Any thoughts/idea/corrections?

[Gosig]

Wow a Death knight complaining about having bad avoidance / tanking glyphs?

You have the highest of all tanking classes without glyphs and the second best armor reduction.. Not to mention your High damage reduction low cooldown spells.

Death knights if anything deserve a nerf and they are getting one.

You can chain your cooldowns and trinkets to make a Awesome avoidance tank or just pop everything together and make a untouchable one.

[Sulika]

With unglyphed UA up, they will have 15k * 2.05 = 30.75k armor, or 64.89% damage reduction.
With glyphed UA up, they will have 15k * 2.2 = 33k armor, or 66.48% damage reduction.

At this gear level, the glyph only provides 1.59% extra DR.

You are failing to look at how much less damage you will take.

At 64.89% reduction that means that 35.11% of physical damage is getting through.
At 66.48% reduction that means that 33.52% of physical damage is getting through.

This means that the glyph reduces the damage you take while UA is up by (35.11 - 33.52) / 35.11 = 4.5% more than you get without the glyph. Still arguably not earthshattering but not all that bad. Also are you sure UA doesn't stack with the frost presence bonus? If it does then that would become more like an 8-9% damage reduction from the glyph (while UA is up).

Even if it doesn't a 4.5% reduction in physical damage taken 33% of the time is a 1.5% reduction in physical damage taken overall which is certainly not too bad for a glyph.

[superflystud]

Wow a Death knight complaining about having bad avoidance / tanking glyphs?

You have the highest of all tanking classes without glyphs and the second best armor reduction.. Not to mention your High damage reduction low cooldown spells.

Death knights if anything deserve a nerf and they are getting one.

You can chain your cooldowns and trinkets to make a Awesome avoidance tank or just pop everything together and make a untouchable one.

Did I complain about not having enough avoidance/mitigation? No. I was comparing one of our Talents to similar Talents in the other trees. This is not a thread about low DK avoidance/mitigation, or about comparing DKs or DK talents to other classes.

If you wish to bitch about it, do it elsewhere.

[superflystud]

You are failing to look at how much less damage you will take.

At 64.89% reduction that means that 35.11% of physical damage is getting through.
At 66.48% reduction that means that 33.52% of physical damage is getting through.

This means that the glyph reduces the damage you take while UA is up by (35.11 - 33.52) / 35.11 = 4.5% more than you get without the glyph. Still arguably not earthshattering but not all that bad. Also are you sure UA doesn't stack with the frost presence bonus? If it does then that would become more like an 8-9% damage reduction from the glyph (while UA is up).

I believe it is additive (base armor not adjusted) but I haven't tested to be sure. I hadn't thought about it in terms of less damage taken. When I get the time, I will add appropriate notes about less damage taken and reassess. Thanx!

[Jathine]

You might not be familiar with Time to Live calculations based on what you are saying. Yes, the physical mitigation does go down as you stack armor, but that is actually necessary because of what has been learned from TTL calculations. If the mitigation from armor went up in a linear fashion the length of time you live for every X amount of armor you add would go up exponentially.

For a full explanation take a look at this thread:
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f63/4...ns-armour.html

The short version of that thread is for every X amount of armor that you add, your time to live increases by the same amount, no matter how much armor you had already. I don't know how to explain it easily without going into a lot of math, so just reading the linked thread will do a better job than I can.

[superflystud]

You might not be familiar with Time to Live calculations based on what you are saying. Yes, the physical mitigation does go down as you stack armor, but that is actually necessary because of what has been learned from TTL calculations. If the mitigation from armor went up in a linear fashion the length of time you live for every X amount of armor you add would go up exponentially.

For a full explanation take a look at this thread:
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f63/4...ns-armour.html

The short version of that thread is for every X amount of armor that you add, your time to live increases by the same amount, no matter how much armor you had already. I don't know how to explain it easily without going into a lot of math, so just reading the linked thread will do a better job than I can.

I know the concept, yes. As I said before, I will reassess in terms of less damage taken, as that is how the other abilities (BS and IBF) are portrayed.

[Isidius]

I know the concept, yes. As I said before, I will reassess in terms of less damage taken, as that is how the other abilities (BS and IBF) are portrayed.

Others have already pointed out the need to evaluate against less damage taken so i wont repeat that. But in a nutshell thats your answer, UBA does not have diminishing returns so nothing to be concerned about. The only exception to that is if you hit the armor cap - at that point it starts to diminish in value

[Gamehenge]

I did a bunch of math on UBA in this thread here:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=33376.0

Also UBA is not additive it's multiplicative. so take your armor value including frost pres and *1.25 for it currently.

Figured out the buffs thing, i forgot i had my seal of panth macroed to UBA. That's how i was getting 33k armor. It doesn't look like the panth use gets multiplied by UBA. I'll check on other buffs in a bit.

In that thread i just linked i showed how when glyphed UBA comes out to roughly 20% physical dmg mitigation. Cause as pointed out here you have to look at the reduction in dmg received, so 60% mitigation means you take 40% dmg. 65% mitigation means 35% dmg taken, a drop in 12.5% dmg you take.

For your armor for post patch glyphed UBA you go [(AC-2*agi)*1.8+2*agi]*1.4

[taek]

Has anyone else done the math on this? As armor grants less and less mitigation, so, too, will UA. This also devalues the UA Glyph in it's current 3.0.8 incarnation as your gear improves.

Armor has diminishing returns on damage reduced (mitigation) but does not have diminishing returns on survivability.

For sake of example, assume you have 98% mitigation. When you are hit by 10,000 damage, you take 200 damage.
A 1% armor boost (99%) changes that to 100 damage.

Your survivability has increased 100% (will take twice as long to kill you) from +1% armor.

There are no diminishing returns on armor to your survivability.

[Stieger23]

Armor has diminishing returns on damage reduced (mitigation) but does not have diminishing returns on survivability.

For sake of example, assume you have 98% mitigation. When you are hit by 10,000 damage, you take 200 damage.
A 1% armor boost (99%) changes that to 100 damage.

Your survivability has increased 100% (will take twice as long to kill you) from +1% armor.

There are no diminishing returns on armor to your survivability.

This is totally correct. Just in case somebody wants to fight about it, this person is right.