Curse

Captain Bulldozer · Sep 13, 2009, 07:50 AM // 07:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marty Silverblade

You missed what I meant.

You said to put armor on the chest + legs because it gets more often than the rest, where you should put health.

This reasoning is wrong.

Look at it this way: You get hit 3x as much in the chest as you do on the head/hands/feet, so you get 3x as much out of the +armor. This is also why you get 3x as much health for survivor on the chest piece as you do in the other areas. So Sentinel on chest and legs would be equivalent to 5/8 chance to have a +armor peice hit, and you'd get +15 health from survivor on 3 pieces. If you put Sentinel on the head, hands, feet, and legs, you'd still have a 5/8 chance to get hit in a +armor place, and get +15 health from Survivor on the chest. Thus, your argument of '+armor on chest and legs and +health everywhere else' is wrong. The ratio of hit chance:health is balanced.

If Survivor gave a set amount of +health regardless of where it was, your reasoning would be correct.

Sorry for the confusion... all I was trying to say is that if you want to go with a mixture of health/armor insignias, the optimal way to maximize the extra armor's effectiveness is to put it on chest + legs. Most people don't seem to realize that by design 3 hits out of 8 are to the chest and 2 out of 8 are to the legs. Dmg reduction through extra armor makes more sense on the most hit areas than on the lesser hit areas. I wasn't trying to say one way is strictly better than another. If you're in an area with no elemental dmg or if your strength is lowered to 12 or less, sentinels do nothing for you, whereas health is always active. This is probably why most people generally go with health anyway. But again, depending on the area, a mixture can be more effective, and particularly in HM the sentinel's affect is easier to see.

Really, as the AI's target seeking is (as near as I can tell) only loosely understood, its hard to say what the best approach to insignias is. Best guess is that the AI has some way of calculating the target to whom they can do maximum damage and prioritizing that target. There are also some other controls that keep the entire mob for going for the same target.

But remember, based on the dmg calculation functions on the official wiki, an increase of 20 to a warrior armor makes a difference. When the sentinel's doesn't apply (assuming the war has no shield as this is a hammer warriror) a warriors armor reduces the incoming dmg to a little more than 70% of what it should have been. If the extra +20 armor kicks in, the dmg will be 50% (half) what is was going to be otherwise. Frequent dmg reductions would seem to be more effective in that case than simply a marginally increased health pool. Of course, this all depends on the damage being elemental. As has already been said, there are many other forms of dmg besides just physical and elemental.

Bottom line for the OP: its easiest and usually cheapest (amongst the best options) to just go with survivors, but sentinels can make a big difference in certain situations.

**Marty Silverblade** · Sep 13, 2009, 09:06 AM // 09:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Bulldozer

Sorry for the confusion... all I was trying to say is that if you want to go with a mixture of health/armor insignias, the optimal way to maximize the extra armor's effectiveness is to put it on chest + legs. Most people don't seem to realize that by design 3 hits out of 8 are to the chest and 2 out of 8 are to the legs. Dmg reduction through extra armor makes more sense on the most hit areas than on the lesser hit areas. I wasn't trying to say one way is strictly better than another. If you're in an area with no elemental dmg or if your strength is lowered to 12 or less, sentinels do nothing for you, whereas health is always active. This is probably why most people generally go with health anyway. But again, depending on the area, a mixture can be more effective, and particularly in HM the sentinel's affect is easier to see.

You still don't get it. The bolded statement is wrong. The benefit provided by sentinels and survivor is equivalent NO MATTER where you put them. As hit chance goes up, the frequency of hits increases (as you mention), but so does the health you get from survivor. Sentinel on the chest is equivalent in every way as Sentinel on the boots, gauntlets and helmet (as in, having sentinel on all those 3 peices).

Tenebrae · Sep 13, 2009, 09:32 AM // 09:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

Running the numbers you would get 25 health vs +20 al against elemental. That +20 al is 12.5% damage reduction. In order to break even you'd need to take 200 damage to the chest and legs areas before sent's kicks in. 5/8th is about a 62% chance so you'd need to take ~320 non armor piercing non armor ignoring elemental damage for your break even point.

Erm its about 20% , he is a Hammer warrior , therefore has 80 armor vs elemental.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

But then again this is PvE so if you are getting killed a lot you'd probably best be looking at other ways to not die.For the op, I really wouldn't worry about insignias until you start getting into HM/elite areas/PvP. Get survivors if you must get anything.

Yeh ofc , anything can really roll thru NM but thats not the point. The thing is that if you are going to get hit in HM , the only thing that can screw W up is armor ignoring damage ( survivor helps but pse , a little ) and elemental nukes/AoE ( because 100vs phys is enough ) and Sentinel/Brawler are far better there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Your perception seems to be suffering from a Von Restorff effect. Because elemental AoE's have long, noticeable casts and cause dramatic changes to the life bars in the party menu, you are paying disproportionate attention to them and paying too little attention to the more numerous smaller non-elemental hits you take.

Von what ?. Ofc im paying attention to the damage that MOST affect W and non-elemental hits matters near zero . Boost the armor you lack , not the one that you already have , Phys armor boost ( besides a shield +10 vs slash ) is pointless when using a hammer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

The fact of the matter is that damage is generally fungible. Stopping 3 damage off 10 small hits is worth more than stopping 25 damage off 1 large hit . (There is an exception for damage that puts you in such immediate danger of dying that it forces your monk to do something inefficient to save you. Such damage is not fungible.

LoL since when dude ? small hits wont ever kill you guessing your healers arent stupid , lagged or eating a pizza while playing but 2 120+ nukes on HM DO actually kill you if they get you while you are on mid HP ( because you know that Ws arent 100% of the time on full HP bar right ?

).
And btw , did you notice that Knights only reduces on 3 PHYS DAMAGE right ? so even on your "small hits" from AoE , that insignia wont help.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

However, that should never be happening to a warrior via armor-sensitive damage anyway.) Sentry's and Knights may not be as "sexy" as Sentinel's since their effects aren't as dramatic and noticeable; they are nonetheless mathematically superior.

On a phys fight ? ofc , on regular HM playing with a Hammer W ? no , hell no.

. Again , survivor is a "not bad" choice but never the best.

High HP weap set > Survivor and thats all

Captain Bulldozer · Sep 13, 2009, 05:22 PM // 17:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marty Silverblade

You still don't get it. The bolded statement is wrong. The benefit provided by sentinels and survivor is equivalent NO MATTER where you put them. As hit chance goes up, the frequency of hits increases (as you mention), but so does the health you get from survivor. Sentinel on the chest is equivalent in every way as Sentinel on the boots, gauntlets and helmet (as in, having sentinel on all those 3 peices).

Don't mean to be a stickler here Marty, especially as I have come to value your opinion a great deal on these forums, but here's the bolded statement once more:

if you want to go with a mixture of health/armor insignias, the optimal way to maximize the extra armor's effectiveness is to put it on chest + legs

That is, if you're going for a mixture, it makes more sense (when trying to get more usefulness from that armor) to put the armor on chest + legs than it does to say put it on head + gloves. So in fact, I do understand your point, that the effect itself scales linearly with the probability of a hit on a given piece, but what I'm saying is that if you really want the armor to even have its affect its much more likely to do that on the chest and legs then on other pieces. Anyone who's played much HM knows that having an extra 25 health can make a difference, but its what you might can a marginal gain (in a technical sense here) whereas the armor from a sentinels can actually reduce the damage taken by around 20% (the difference between the 70% or so a warrior would normally take and the 50% the warrior would take with +20 ar).

In short what I'm saying is that even though the 2 options both scale linearly as you describe, the +ar option CAN reduce more dmg that you would gain from a survivor insignia (as the amount of dmg initially dealt by particularly high level foes can be substantial, particularly from elementalists). To that end, the linear scale of the 2 is not entirely equal, as the armor reduces damage in a PROPRTIONAL (not linear) way. You seem to have a decent understanding of math, so you undoubtedly know that a proportional decrease of damage can easily dwarf a linear increase in health. Getting that proportional decrease to trigger more often tends to maximize the effect.

Let's make this clearer with a specific example. For simplification, let's assume you're not being healed or doing anything other than standing there tanking a level 20 elementalist foe. Suppose that foe only uses one skill which causes 100 elemental damage per hit initially (before armor calculations). Warrior 1 will be equipped with all survivor insignias (no runes other than a minor strength to get strength up to 13 or more, again for simplicity), while warrior 2 will be equipped with survivor everywhere except sentinel on chest + legs. Then warrior 1 will (after reduction) take about 70 dmg per hit. Warrior 2, on the other hand will take 70 per hit 3/8 of the time but only 50 per hit 5/8 of the time. Then, on average, in 8 hits warrior 1 will take 70x8 = 560 dmg, while warrior 2 will take 50x5+70x3 = 460 dmg. With no other sources of health, warrior 1 will have 520 health (480 for being max lvl, 40 for the survivors insignias), while warrior 2 will have 495 health (480 for max lvl and 15 extra from survivors). As you can see, warrior 1 is actually dead, while warrior 2 still has 35 health, so the dmg need not scale linearly the same way the health increase does.

Sure, the above is a highly specialized example, as the extra armor triggers every time. You can do the calculations yourself, but you'll find the best way to decrease the dmg with a mixture of survivor/sentinel insignias is to allow the dmg reduction from armor to occur as often as possible. But as I have said, it is highly dependent on the areas and on what type of damage is taken.

Chthon · Sep 13, 2009, 07:15 PM // 19:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Bulldozer

Sorry for the confusion... all I was trying to say is that if you want to go with a mixture of health/armor insignias, the optimal way to maximize the extra armor's effectiveness is to put it on chest + legs.

[edit: I changed my a second time. Marty is still right.]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Bulldozer

a proportional decrease of damage can easily dwarf a linear increase in health.

That's an argument for why +armor is better that +hp in general, not for why it's better on specific body parts.

Your comparison neglects Warrior C who wears all +20armor insignias. He takes 50x8hits subtracted from his 480 health and has 80 remaining. He does better than the other two. All you've shown is that armor is better than life at these multipliers.

Let's look at it this way:
For Surivivors:
head/feet/hands = 5hp
legs = 10hp = 2x head/feet/hands
body = 15hp = 3x head/feet/hands

For Sentinels (assuming all damage is elemental):
head/feet/hands = (1 / 8) * (100 - (100 * (2^((60 - 80) / 40)))) = 3.66116524% damage reduction
legs = (2 / 8) * (100 - (100 * (2^((60 - 80) / 40)))) = 7.32233047% damage reduction = 2x head/feet/hands
body = (3 / 8) * (100 - (100 * (2^((60 - 80) / 40)))) = 10.9834957% damage reduction = 3x head/feet/hand

In either case, you get the base bonus times 1, 2, or 3. It's just a question of which bonus is worth more to start with.

Quote:

Really, as the AI's target seeking is (as near as I can tell) only loosely understood

Actually, I'm very certain I know what sort of algorithm a-net is using for target selection, and I have a decent idea of the weights assigned to various inputs. If you want to read a post on it, use search.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tenebrae

Von what ?. Ofc im paying attention to the damage that MOST affect W and non-elemental hits matters near zero

You are paying too much attention to relatively rare dramatic hits and too little attention to common non-dramatic hits that have a larger cumulative effect. Hence your error.

Quote:

LoL since when dude ? small hits wont ever kill you guessing your healers arent stupid , lagged or eating a pizza while playing but 2 120+ nukes on HM DO actually kill you if they get you while you are on mid HP ( because you know that Ws arent 100% of the time on full HP bar right ?

Last time I checked "spike" had this counterpart called "pressure" that overwhelmed monks with more damage than they could heal. Also last time I checked, warriors are supposed to be the least susceptible to spiking of any class. If you ever get killed, it should be through pressure. Also, any monk who leaves people within 2 hits of dead without a PS or a heal is a bad monk.

Quote:

On a phys fight ?

Even in a mixed mob. It takes a very, very, very elemental-damage-heavy mob to make Sentinel's the top-performing insignia. Like I said, back in Factions when these armor mods were new, I made a very, very extensive post that calculated which armor mod was best for a few hundred possible mob compositions. Use search.

Tenebrae · Sep 13, 2009, 10:24 PM // 22:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

You are paying too much attention to relatively rare dramatic hits and too little attention to common non-dramatic hits that have a larger cumulative effect. Hence your error.

I think you are paying too much attention to little hits that will never kill the class with most armor in the game , hence your error.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Last time I checked "spike" had this counterpart called "pressure" that overwhelmed monks with more damage than they could heal. Also last time I checked, warriors are supposed to be the least susceptible to spiking of any class. If you ever get killed, it should be through pressure. Also, any monk who leaves people within 2 hits of dead without a PS or a heal is a bad monk.

Pressure in PvE ? Maybe you are right on PvP ( im not even bothering to argue there ) but in PvE fights are much MUCH shorter and foes die damn fast so if you are close to get killed there is going to be because spikes or elemental nukes , not pressure , therefore in PvE Sentinel > Knight/Survivor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Even in a mixed mob. It takes a very, very, very elemental-damage-heavy mob to make Sentinel's the top-performing insignia. Like I said, back in Factions when these armor mods were new, I made a very, very extensive post that calculated which armor mod was best for a few hundred possible mob compositions. Use search.

You dont really need to make an extensive study about that , just boost the armor you lack , simple. Like i said before , pressure on PvE for a W should never be a prob ...... and even less against phys. BTW what are the keywords to use search for that thread ? thank you .

Lux Aeterna · Sep 14, 2009, 02:27 AM // 02:27

Sentinel's, or survivors if you're going to be dealing with a lot of hexes or degen.

One thing people forget about Sentinel's is that it actually makes it far easier for monks to save you -- Instead of taking 450~dmg and needing your monk to exhaust 15 energy with protting and bringing you up to full, you'll only take ~350dmg which can mostly be healed by one WoH, leaving your monks less pressured and having a much easier time keeping you alive.

Monks die when their teams are under pressure, if they're spending excessive energy on a poorly armored team they're over 9000 times more likely to die from a sudden spike. If it's taking them all their energy to fill your 650hp redbar, eles and monks are much more likely to get killed off easily.

That said, I tend to run Survivor's in pvp because of constant hexes.

Dusk_ · Sep 14, 2009, 06:52 AM // 06:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

You are paying too much attention to relatively rare dramatic hits and too little attention to common non-dramatic hits that have a larger cumulative effect. Hence your error.

Even in a mixed mob. It takes a very, very, very elemental-damage-heavy mob to make Sentinel's the top-performing insignia. Like I said, back in Factions when these armor mods were new, I made a very, very extensive post that calculated which armor mod was best for a few hundred possible mob compositions. Use search.

The problem here is that you're looking at pure mathematical calculations, and ignoring the more practical data.

Blind, Weakness, and Blocking. Physical damage is easy to deal with, and the majority of team builds deal with it heavily without devoting entire builds to it.

Looking at pen and paper calculations, Sentry and Knight may reduce more damage in total, but most of the time that's damage which is already being heavily reduced.

Terek Zelta · Sep 18, 2009, 01:21 PM // 13:21

Feel free to correct me here, but there's no definitive answer as far as I can tell. Sentinel's, sentry's/brawler's, survivor's all work really well, and it all depends on what you're fighting. I wouldn't run Knight's, but I can definitely see the logic behind it.

Recently, when I fought an HM warrior boss with a group, survivor's insignias were the only things that saved me. They were the difference between me surviving a series of 150+ damage hits and me dying, allowing the enemy to rush our backline and wipe us out. After a well placed RoF and some heals, I was brought back up to full health from 32 HP with no issues. Had I not had survivor's, we probably would've lost.

In other areas, like in many EotN dungeons, sentinel's do a lot more for me.

Actually, if I wasn't so poor, I'd have two identical sets of armor, one equipped with sentinel's insignias and the other with survivor's insignias. At the moment, I just perfect salvage kit/replace them depending on where I'm going.