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  1. #1
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    Block Rates and Block Mitigation

    This is pretty accurate I think.

    Base block rate and protection should be 100 points in both categories, for 10%. So if you had a shield with 0 block and 0 block rate, you'd still have that.

    Every 10 points on the shield is additional 1% in either category.

    So, for instance, my lominsan lantern has ~13% protection and 28% block rate, with 33 block and 180 block rate

    I'm only going by a small sample of data.

    The shield with 77 block would get 18% protection

    The shield with 33 block would get 13% protection

    Block rates of ~17.7% and 28% felt accurate

    There might be a hole in the middle - the higher the block protection the more STR you need to meet the cap, and same with DEX

    But they don't effect the rate caps themselves

    That said, 200 STR and 200 DEX is very easy to cap

  2. #2
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    Correction

    Relic Shield +1, would require 180 STR and 180 DEX to achieve 28% block rate, and 28% protection

    It is safe to say STR would be equivalent to DEX in numbers, just different meaning. The number on the shield is the hard cap. But say, wearing a 200 block rate shield without 200 dex? You're missing some of the action

  3. #3
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    Make that -100 STR -100 DEX

    the base 10% is FREE

    So fuck stacking DEX and STR

  4. #4
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    This was fucked up from the beginning but this thread is now a correct formula

  5. #5
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    So let's do a calculation

    You get hit 1000 times, for 100 damage each time (base dmg). let's calculate who takes the least damage

    Hoplon = 36/200 (14%, 30% rate)

    Kite Shield = 122/122 (22%, 22% rate)

    Tower Shield = 186/38 (29%, 14% rate)

    Hoplon - 300 blocks with 14 dmg negated each

    Kite Shield - 220 blocks with 22 dmg negated each

    Tower Shield - 140 blocks with 29 dmg negated each

    multiply...

    Hoplon Total: 4200

    Kite Shield Total: 4840

    Tower Shield Total: 4060

    So of course the dark lite shield remains the best shield until Relic, and this thread is now pointless

    Hoplon is obviously better than Tower because of shield swipe

  6. #6
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    Vamos los Perds!

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    What the hell happened here haha?

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rajah View Post
    So let's do a calculation

    math math math
    You could do it a much simpler way, block rate * block strength gives you estimated total damage reduction, and just pick the highest. Incidentally, these are the same numbers you came up with, i.e. for hoplon .14*.3 = 4.2% damage mitigation, or 4,200 damage out of 100,000. So you can just simplify it even further and say the best shield will be the one that gives the highest number in this formula: (100+rate)*(100+strength). This basically implies that, assuming you're working with the same total rate+strength, the one that's the closest to equal spread between them (i.e. kite) will be the best.

    I don't have Bulwark yet, is the 60% rate increase a flat (rate+600) bonus or just (rate*1.6)? If it's a straight +600 rate for 15 seconds, I could see block strength being prioritized over rate for some bigger content.

  8. #8
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    It must be a flat bonus. Let's say I'm level 0, I have a level 0 shield with 200 block rate, and I have 10 Dexterity.

    Going by what I was saying, I'll have a base block rate of 11%. Multiply by 1.6 with bulwark and I have 17.6% block rate (for 15 sec under 180 recast I believe)

    Bulwark would be considered more effective with a higher block rate shield, than a Tower shield, because I get a higher percentage of strikes being blocked under the ability.

    A 200 block rate shield with 200 DEX to support and 30% base block rate, should have roughly 48% block rate under bulwark, an 18% increase.

    Whereas a Tower Shield with 14% block rate will have about 22% block rate under bulwark, a mere 8% increase.

    Well, it looks better to me. (because percentages are flat, and arithmetic is curved, I would only sponsor a percentage). So I'm going to say, USE BULWARK, and I won't until I know when it's better to use bulwark. With a tower shield, or a hoplon? The answer is the Hoplon, I get a larger cut of the candy.

  9. #9
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    I want to state that I have yet to prove if 1 STR/DEX = 1 point of Mitigation/Rate is exactly true.

    When I tested a tower shield for block mitigation, it had 130-140 mitigation and I have at least 170 STR naked Level 40+ (the level of the shield). So I had no way of under-supporting it with STR and check if mitigation fell below cap

    Whether or not I added more STR, it's protection stood at 24%, in lue with the calcuations

    It did at least prove that the base 10% is a freebie, because I did not need 230-240 STR to get 24% protection, I had it after 130 STR

    I'm really very, very certain it is correct. But to truly prove this all, you'd need a shield with more protection rating than your naked STR. Then you'd add STR until you could even with the shield's cap. On the bright side - there could be an area of fatty tissue where you can still be under leveled in STR or DEX and still hit shield cap ratings. I do not know. But STR is the one to test, because I'm not standing there for 10,000 swings to get exact block rates to meet my hypothesis, and I already consider it to be true by general observation.

    And frankly, a shield you'd have to wear gear to carry, is the better shield than the one you could use naked. The scorpion shield I now carry, bests my DEX level by a good margin. If I added ~30 DEX I could achieve the 30% block rate cap, or I'd have roughly 27% with 170 DEX (I don't wear DEX gear...). Still, if there is a 3%, it's good to know it's there.

  10. #10
    Relic Horn
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rajah View Post
    Bulwark would be considered more effective with a higher block rate shield, than a Tower shield, because I get a higher percentage of strikes being blocked under the ability.

    ...

    Well, it looks better to me. (because percentages are flat, and arithmetic is curved, I would only sponsor a percentage). So I'm going to say, USE BULWARK, and I won't until I know when it's better to use bulwark. With a tower shield, or a hoplon? The answer is the Hoplon, I get a larger cut of the candy.
    Actually, if it's a multiplier it scales equally across all shield types. Using the formula I mentioned above, if bulwark was a rate multiplier, it would become [(rate+100)*1.6] * (strength+100). Because of the distributive property, this just makes it the old formula multiplied by 1.6: (rate+100) * (strength+100) * 1.6

    Yes, a hoplon that already blocks more is going to gain a bigger boost of how often it's blocking, but each block is still relatively puny. Because of how huge the damage reduction is on towers, the smaller extra percentage of blocks raises it by approximately the same amount of damage reduction, assuming they're relatively equal shields to begin with. So priority would still be towards finding a shield with roughly equal block/strength.

    However, if it's a flat bonus, that very, very significantly skews ratios towards tower shields and significantly skewering away from hoplons, for the duration of the spell. If you're riding bulwark timers all the time, 15 seconds out of 180 means it's up 1/12th of the time, or 8.33%. 600 * 1/12 = 50, effectively giving every shield +50 block rate. Going back to your original 3 shield examples, it would make them reduce 4.76% for hoplon (increase of +0.56%, marginal gain of 13.33%), 6.04% for kite (increase of 1.2%, marginal gain of 24.79%), and 5.38% for tower shield (increase of 1.32%, marginal gain of 32.51%).

    tl;dr Kite is probably still the best.

  11. #11
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    Yes, the numbers are even.

    Using the 1000 blows, it's about 6500 for tower and 6700 for hoplon.

    concerning total blows taken and blocked, the hoplon blocks nearly half of every blow with bulwark, while the tower blocks nearly a quarter. The tower just blocks twice as much damage.

    So if the monster hits slow and hard, try the tower. If it hits often try the hoplon.

    In math it makes no sense, but in context of the game, I have a higher damage rating clipped from a Tower shield, whereas I have a high number of attacks snipped with a Hoplon.

    The thing is, there are too many pulls in this game to not have a hoplon equipped. I need to rely on a quarter to a third of my attacks being deflected by a seventh or eighth. It's like wearing a shadow mantle that could proc or wearing a defending mantle that would always proc. I can't rely on a seventh or eighth of my attacks having a quarter or third of protection, it's not me.

    That is how I yield it.

    With the kite shield, it is mathematically superior, and I'd rather use it for aesthetics alone.

  12. #12
    Relic Horn
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rajah View Post
    In math it makes no sense, but in context of the game, I have a higher damage rating clipped from a Tower shield, whereas I have a high number of attacks snipped with a Hoplon.

    The thing is, there are too many pulls in this game to not have a hoplon equipped. I need to rely on a quarter to a third of my attacks being deflected by a seventh or eighth. It's like wearing a shadow mantle that could proc or wearing a defending mantle that would always proc. I can't rely on a seventh or eighth of my attacks having a quarter or third of protection, it's not me.
    The game IS math. If it mathematically comes out as higher, it will ultimately reduce more damage assuming you have a significant enough sample size to make the margin of error sufficiently small. Yes, tower shield is more "spikey" in it's resistance with a low sample size, but that spike works both ways, i.e. if you know you're only going to be taking a small amount of hits (i.e. just tanking adds for a short time) with the ~15% block rate of towers, you're just as likely to block 3 or more out of 10 and reduce a metric fuckton of damage as you are to not get any blocks (0 of 10) at all. So maybe in that short timeframe if you really need consistency to survive, hoplon might be safer. However, if you're just tanking something a very short time, you can always pop bulwark and then towers win hands down.

    It doesn't matter how you slice up the math, assuming equal level and a lack of other outside factors (i.e. need to block to cast spells without interruption), kite>>>>tower>hoplon for mitigation. The reason the stats in your example don't exactly match up with this is because you're using a level 46 hoplon to compare against a level 44 tower.

    And regarding the Shadow Mantle thing, the reason for it is two-fold. First, you get decreasing returns on shadow mantle the more PDT you already stack, since you only block the pdt you're missing from 100, so near PDT cap it becomes essentially the same value as a 3% proc rate would with no pdt gear. Second, PDT gear itself gets increasing return; each extra point you add closer to 50 is worth marginally more than the last. That being said, if you can get 50 without a cape, you still use shadow mantle because it effectively allows you to go beyond the cap. The analogy, however, doesn't exactly transfer directly to this argument, because there are no 900 block rate shields availabe to get 100% chance of rate reduction like PDT gear has.

  13. #13
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    Are there any hard numbers relating DEX and Block Rate to the actual % chance a shield will block, or is this still all speculation?

  14. #14
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    OK, let's say the enemy hits for 1000 DMG each, and MAY use a JA which can be blocked, but deals 3000 DMG

    If you have a Hoplon, you could expect to block 1/3 of the time, so instead of 1000 DMG, you might get hit for 850 DMG

    With a Tower Shied, you could expect to block 15% of the time, so instead of 1000 DMG then, it would only be 700 DMG.

    And when the mob uses a JA, which happens quite often, you'll get hit for 1700 DMG using a Hoplon, or 1400 DMG with the Tower Shield.

    Going by your maximum HP, which is 4500 HP in this scenario...

    The monster strikes FIVE times, and uses one JA...

    You're already DEAD without cures

    But in this sample, getting struck and the chances of dying, are figuratively very high, that you HAVE to block in such a small sample of attacks, to even survive. You don't have the time to wait for a block.

    It is due to maximum HP being so small when getting involved with HNM that hit like 18 wheelers, that you essentially need a mitigation as often as possible, just to have time between hits for a cure to stay alive.

  15. #15
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    Since this is now a debate about the merits of using different types of shields...

    We figured this all out back in XI. If you have a shield that blocks 40% of the time and reduced 80% of the damage, it is an overall 32% damage reduction. A shield that blocks 60% of the time and only reduces 60% of the damage is an overall 36% damage reduction. One that blocks 70% of the time for 25% reduction is an overall 17.5% reduction. Given these scenarios, the 2nd shield is the best choice for damage mitigation. It has nothing to do with reducing those OHSHIT moments, it has nothing to do with taking slightly less damage more of the time, it has all to do with taking overall less damage.

    Now, I saw this image posted in the STR/VIT/DEX discussion thread, can we get some verification? It doesn't quite make sense given the Round Shield should block more often than Kite but maybe I'll get an answer in that thread.

    http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/a...BlockRates.png

  16. #16
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    If you're getting hit 5 times and taking a TP move without getting a cure, that's on your healers, not you.

    Also, what TP move does 3000 damage that you're expecting to tank with a level 44 shield and only 4500 hp?

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheDirtyHobo View Post
    If you're getting hit 5 times and taking a TP move without getting a cure, that's on your healers, not you.

    Also, what TP move does 3000 damage that you're expecting to tank with a level 44 shield and only 4500 hp?
    Grudges with 3 stacks do ~2800. 3800 with four stacks, although it's not even blockable (but Hallowed Ground will negate it). Can't think of much else off the top of my head at the bottom end of 50 content.

  18. #18
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    Trying to reconcile blocked damage here and I'm probably just stupid. With Holy Shield +1 I block 26% of damage, though the formula says it should be 28%? (181/10 + base 10% should be 28%, yeah?) I have 313 STR on PLD, which should assumedly be pushing the mitigation even higher than 28%?

    Am I missing something or is the formula not quite accurate?

  19. #19
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    Has any testing been done to see if Parry processes before or after Block?

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Obsidian View Post
    Has any testing been done to see if Parry processes before or after Block?
    Can't remember where I saw it on OF but someone mentioned a reddit thread where they tested parrying rates between WAR and PLD and found that after removing blocks from the equation they had equal Parry %. Based on Shield Blocks artificially lowering apparent parry rates for PLD I'd say it goes Dodge? N > Block? N > Parry? N > Hit