Info on Tank Mitigation

[Findalt]

Hi team!

During this expansion I decided to re-roll to Tank since our MT had to step away. I've been reading/watching all resources I could on tanks, but one thing that I found particularly hard to find was information on tank mitigation. This is complicated to generate since: (i) it's situational, so statistical analysis are of limited use; (ii) it's affected by player skill and choice, where a player may choose to take damage and prioritize DPS.

But nevertheless, for those players that prefer to optimize their character for "tankiness", I thought it would be good to have a resource to look at data. And since I coulnd't find any, I ended up doing my own analysis with patch 9.2 data. I wanted to share it in case it's useful for anyone.

1. Methodology
I took the top parsed tanks for healing from Warcraftlogs in M+25 Fortified dungeons, and controlled for DPS (they had to be 98% + in both). I tried to do this with the same affix but there wasn't enough data. So bear in mind that the data is anecdotal, it should only be used to get an indication of what each class is capable of. However since you are taking the top ranked parses per spec, even if it's a sample size of 1, you are taking the best of each class.

Then I looked at the key variables per tank:

• Mitigation: How much damaged they reduced for each source, then averaged. I have the split per skill in the excel link below, but I'll only share the average below for simplicity. Take into account that while this number summarizes the average mitigation for all skills, some attacks are far more common than others. Melee hits account for 65-70% of Mythic+ damage, so I've broken that out.
• Damage Taken Per Second: This is interesting as it determines the maximum damage spikes. However, since we are averaging it, it's possible that specific skills hit harder than others (i.e. Magic vs Melee).
• Self-Healing Per Second: I restricted healing to the tank only, and averaged it. Again, this can be tricky since it can say that a tank is great at healing itself, but may not have big heals to save themselves from a big hit.
• Net Damage Taken Per Second: Calculated as DTPS - SHPS. This should give us guidance on how much help the tank needs from the healer in average.
• DPS: Damage per second, again in average.

While I have been reading the forum for a long time I only recently decided to start posting so I can't share links to the work yet, but this is the summary of the results:

2. Results

Mitigation

• DH: 49%
• DK: 30%
• Druid: 42%
• Monk: 53%
• Pala: 42%
• Warrior: 46%

Melee Hits Mitigation (% -- average hit)

• DH: 72% -- 8,894
• DK: 62% -- 12,999
• Druid: 77% -- 7,464
• Monk: 84% -- 5,024
• Pala: 81% -- 5,923
• Warrior: 86% -- 4,419

Damage Taken Per Second

• DH: 12,909
• DK: 20,192
• Druid: 10,738
• Monk: 15,644
• Pala: 10,216
• Warrior: 8,002

Self-Healing Per Second

• DH: 9,840
• DK: 17,129
• Druid: 8,381
• Monk: 11,302
• Pala: 6,871
• Warrior: 6,003

Net Damage Taken Per Second

• DH: 3,069
• DK: 3,063
• Druid: 2,357
• Monk: 4,342 -- Accounting for Celestial Fortune, this goes down to 2,512
• Pala: 3,345
• Warrior: 1,999

Damage Per Second

• DH: 10,761
• DK: 12,372
• Druid: 10,291
• Monk: 12,402
• Pala: 12,360
• Warrior: 8,915

The Excel file is here (copy and remove the spaces): https: //file.io/VNaB6605dtEG

3. Insights
Understanding Tank Damage throughput was tricky for me at first. You need to first understand how much damage you can avoid through Parry/Dodge, then how much you can mitigate (Block/Absorb), in the case of monks how much you can delay (Stagger), and then how much you can recover from yourself (Self-Healing). DTPS gives you a decent combined metric for damage intake, and Net DTPS allows you to account for self-healing.

So now that I had the data I could basically try to understand better the feedback that guides/resources and Pros were giving me. Doing a small summary per class:

• Monk: They probably have the best overall avoidance and mitigation. Net DTPS is middle of the pack, but thanks to Stagger it's the most stable. And since they have plenty of CDs and a big absorb, they can deal with most situations bettter than anyone.
• Druids: Their melee mitigation is high, but their average melee hit is larger than you think. They will struggle with magic and dots, where only their high HP pool will help you. While they technically mitigate less than the warrior, the ability to self heal gives them more flexibility than them. And their high HP makes them more forgiving.
• Warrior: While on paper they have the best melee mitigation and some of the best overall mitigation, the lack of a pure self-heal penalizes them. Most of their SHPS are Ignore Pains, which only reduce 50% of the next hit by a medium amount. This means that while warriors overall take very little damage, they are incredibly vulnerable to a moment where one of their defensives drops off or if they eat some mechanics.
• Paladin: They have good melee mitigation when all their defensives are up. But the chance of getting hit without them up, combined with a relatively low self healing capability leaves them exposed. You need to plan ahead very well to make the pala tanky. In average, it makes the pala feel weaker than Druids, and usually weaker than warriors, although with more resources than warriors to save yourself if you get in trouble.
• DH: This is the only class I have not played at 60 and the data has surprised me. Their overall mitigation is higher than I anticipated thanks to their magic mitigation, and while they are more vulnerable to melee hits, their self-healing let's them survive things that the prior classes wouldn't be able to withstand. Definitely a higher skill level tank, with high risk, high reward.
• DK: No surprises on the DK data. It's the highest risk-reward class. Takes in a ton of damage, healds for a ton of damage. Not a great class if you like to mitigate as much as possible, but super versatile and capable if you are ok with the reactive healing gameplay (which still requires plenty of proactive planning to have deathstrikes available to respond to damage).

One of the things I was trying to understand with the data was why Warriors were doing so bad. I mained a warrior in Castle Nathria and Sanctum of Domination Heroic in progression, and it was clear that I was getting destroyed by things other tanks didn't suffer as much with. And the data basically shows it. Warriors don't have a big enough gap to other classes with their defensive toolkit, and their lack of healing and very limited absorb mechanism doesn't let them catch up. They aren't bad, the rest are just better. Add to this that in raids you have more magical and dot damage than M+, especially Sanctum, and can understand how that advantage in melee mitigation basically disappears. IMO, they either need to get more baseline mitigation to make the class make sense, or Ignore Pain's design needs to be reverted back to it's original concept of a pure absorb with larger caps.

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FYI I did a similar analysis on Rygelon Mythic for Raid but I've learned to clean data a bit more since then. I'll try to update it. If you are curious it's here (remove spaces for the link to work): https: //twitter.com/gerdelgado/status/1530290076281753601

[Tommi]

Just a bit on pala... If you can't keep your mitigation up, you're bad. simple. Youcan have 100% coverage on SOTR super easy.

[potis]

Most long term decent tanks know this, reality of the situation is, "If you could have an equally farmed tank for X boss, you would swap", and thats okay, not all tanks can be equal to everything at all situations, otherwise the tanks that provide something extra, have the advantage, aka M+ shows this often.

"Oh Blizzard fucked up the scaling, its okay, lets just kite as DK/DH, fuck the other tanks" etc.

Data is a bit different if you start counting external resources though and in general unless the monk is nerfed for the period it will always come out on top for most of the situations cause of smooth damage intake cause it helps the healers, they dont have to know.

"Oh, DK has no runic power, i better big heal"
"Oh that Warrior aint taking any damage for over 30 seconds now, i guess he will take some now, OH HOW THE FUCK DID HE DIE IN 2 SECONDS, I WAS CASTING".
"HOW DID THAT PALADIN DIE , OH HE DIDNT BLOCK AND SOTR WENT DOWN FOR 0.5 SECONDS, WTFFFF"

Basically, in the end it comes down to how good your healers are, how knowledgeable of their tank and when to save their ass.

Bad healers? Cover with DK/DH (And Paladin every other expansion when he rotates between a tank and an extra healer).
Good healers? All tanks are equal.
Easy mode for both and Blizzard forgot to nerf Stagger? LOL MONK THEN.

Data is awesome, but its not always raw intake, therefor raw output.

Again, for relevant content where Blizzard cares to keep some balance, aka Mythic Raiding and up to +20 at the moment.

Another thing to note, i assume you took the data from Warcraftlogs, which kills though? A progressing tank, plays much more defensively compared to the 10th clear log, etc.

[Findalt]

Easy mode for both and Blizzard forgot to nerf Stagger? LOL MONK THEN.

Data is awesome, but its not always raw intake, therefor raw output.

The more I look at Monk the more I realize how absurdly powerful it is. Not that it breaks the game, I think all tanks are viable - the warrior just having some trouble where others don't.

On your second point, I did this with M+ to try to avoid things like Tank Swaps, and having enough hits where averages would mean something. But I agree that even with that there's a lot of variability involved, so the data can't be taken as truth without further inspection.

[Skildar]

On DK, it's not that much a high risk reward kind of tank. It's just a pain to find good raid logs for the spec. As the top healers and dps will never use their mitigation. Because using mitigation means spending resources on damage reduction instead of dealing damage. And death strike (healing ability) heals more based on damage received in the last few seconds.

But DK can actually reduce quite a lot of damage and increase their maximum health by a lot and very regularly. It is not the simplest tank though.

I find playing necrolord to be pretty nice vut I have seen blood DK of every covenants, so your fetish will be the best.

[Findalt]

On DK, it's not that much a high risk reward kind of tank. It's just a pain to find good raid logs for the spec. As the top healers and dps will never use their mitigation. Because using mitigation means spending resources on damage reduction instead of dealing damage. And death strike (healing ability) heals more based on damage received in the last few seconds.

This is very true. Plus if the tank screws up they will come up higher on healing meters. I myself had this a couple of weeks ago where we fucked up positiniong on Lords of Dread, causing us to eat too many stacks from the bosses, and got a 98th percentile on healing.

[potis]

The more I look at Monk the more I realize how absurdly powerful it is. Not that it breaks the game, I think all tanks are viable - the warrior just having some trouble where others don't.

Because braindead mechanics to make it feel new when it came out in a period where they were still trying to get people to play better until they gave up in WoD.

Its not bad per se, stuff like that existing that are much easier is healthy for the game but when they fuck up and it ends up being first on overall mitigation also because Stagger needs another 5% nerf, it kinda breaks the game.

Either way, my point was that most logs are totally damage oriented so its really hard to tell true DTPS, the most obvious to this is usually DK as the above guy mentioned, and Paladins, they play completely differently if played properly defensively.

[szandos]

Having healed a lot of 20s lately I'd take a monk tank any day. They are always consistently easy to heal and I seem to have ages to get them back up if they go low.

[Tech614]

Because braindead mechanics to make it feel new when it came out in a period where they were still trying to get people to play better until they gave up in WoD.

Its not bad per se, stuff like that existing that are much easier is healthy for the game but when they fuck up and it ends up being first on overall mitigation also because Stagger needs another 5% nerf, it kinda breaks the game.

Either way, my point was that most logs are totally damage oriented so its really hard to tell true DTPS, the most obvious to this is usually DK as the above guy mentioned, and Paladins, they play completely differently if played properly defensively.

My dude if you think stagger from MoP and WoD is in any way the same to stagger from legion onward you are proving you have no clue how brewmaster has ever worked.

MoP and WoD brewmasters where reliant on building up massive guard shiels from vengeance and w/e the WoD healing equiv was of vengeance I forgot the name of. Stagger was merely a cherry on top tied to your mastery rating and not your primary mitigation like it was from legion onward.

[potis]

My dude if you think stagger from MoP and WoD is in any way the same to stagger from legion onward you are proving you have no clue how brewmaster has ever worked.

MoP and WoD brewmasters where reliant on building up massive guard shiels from vengeance and w/e the WoD healing equiv was of vengeance I forgot the name of. Stagger was merely a cherry on top tied to your mastery rating and not your primary mitigation like it was from legion onward.

You cant even read, i wont even bother, you saw the word "WoD" and assumed i am talking about monk pre-WoD, when i am clearly mentioning the community, what else is there to discuss if you cant even read basic things.

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Having healed a lot of 20s lately I'd take a monk tank any day. They are always consistently easy to heal and I seem to have ages to get them back up if they go low.

Exactly why they feel the "best" even if the numbers dont support it, when the numbers do support it, thats when you have heavy tank unbalance. They "feel" much easier to heal.

[Loveliest]

You did your data based on high M+ keys on tanks yet didn't reach the same conclusion as to which tank is meta for M+ and why?

[Alroxas]

There was a pretty good analysis done back in 2016 by @Agromat_wow on the Tank scaling models for Legion which was fairly insightful back during that xpac. I think there are still some good information there even though systems have changed slightly.

Meanwhile, the other side of the coin to tank mitigation is the utility said tank can bring to the composition. From M+ to raids, there are some reasons why certain tanks are "preferred" even though all are "viable" for 99% of the content.


Moreover, there are some fights (or rather encounter mechanics) that are just easier with certain tanks which make them more appealing than others.

[Tech614]

You cant even read, i wont even bother, you saw the word "WoD" and assumed i am talking about monk pre-WoD, when i am clearly mentioning the community, what else is there to discuss if you cant even read basic things.

Oh I read your post perfectly, sorry for exposing the fact you think stagger was what made brewmaster strong in MoP and WoD when it was just Guard lol.

[Findalt]

You did your data based on high M+ keys on tanks yet didn't reach the same conclusion as to which tank is meta for M+ and why?

The analysis is not trying to determine the Meta. It's trying to understand how tanks compare in terms of mitigation. The Meta is determined by more factors like DPS profile, buffs, utility, CDs, etc.

There was a pretty good analysis done back in 2016 by @Agromat_wow on the Tank scaling models for Legion which was fairly insightful back during that xpac. I think there are still some good information there even though systems have changed slightly.

Oh do you happen to have a link by any chance? I'd love to check it out.

[garicasha]

Although this forum is sorely lacking in analysis like this, it’s just tough to draw conclusions from parses like that.

For 99.9% of players, the best metric of how good tanks are is what the 0.1% are using.

And even that will only tell what works for the best players that need great DPS.

And I think if you looked at what tanks were used for the first 10 guilds that cleared each mythic fight you’d get roughly the same answers, that monks and DKs were over represented and warriors and maybe pallies were not.

So in short I’m disagreeing with the methodology.

[Elsiriana]

If they need to nerf monk in your eyes you also better say nerf DK also if you talk about a broken tank that is the biggest of them all immo.