Mitigation or HP?

[Kenji11]

<DIV>Ive seen quite a few paladins who designed themselves for tanking, and Ive noticed two trends, at least with people who do not have considerable amounts of fabled gear.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>They either go for more mitigation and sacrifice hp, or more hp and sacrifice mitigation. Basically Ive seen pallies in def stance in tanking gear with 7.3kish hp and 55% mit, and others with 6.5kish hp with 62% mit. A perfect example of this is the choice between a light and dark chitin ring. The light ring gives 50 power, resists, and AC. Dark ring gives 80 hp, 20 sta, etc, and about half as much AC.</DIV>

[WLR]

<P align=left>When tanking, Mit > all</P> <P align=left>Sato</P> <P align=left>70 Paladin</P> <P align=left>Forsaken</P>

[Nayr]

I don't know really, but I would rather have 8.1k HP and 4.8kmit than 7khp with 5kmit, thats just me tho, What you others think

[Nevar]

<DIV>Well I have around 8800 hp solo and 5500 mit solo, find the right pieces and you can haev both easily.</DIV>

[Kenji11]

the right pieces being mostly fabled and relic, right?

[Nevar]

<DIV>Yea, and there are a few really good legendary pieces aswell.</DIV>

[augusti]

<DIV>I have always felt that HP is the ultimate mitigator. Let me explain</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Lets just break down the survival aspects of tanking, not agro, not positioning, just surviving.</DIV> <DIV>Simply, if you end the fight with HP, you win, if you end it without, you lose.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Avoidance, and mit will effect melee.</DIV> <DIV>Resists will effect spells</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>HP effects BOTH.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>To me, I have always went with the tangible. The RNG is hard to guess, hard to anticipate. Even with high mit, damage can spike... mobs can crit... murphys law can happen. With mit you can "in theory"  suck up a percentge of a hit. But its really guesswork imo. How many times have you thought " how in the heck did I get hit that hard with XXXX mitigation or XXXX resists.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you look at HP you know, without doubt, when that number is gone, your dead. To me that is tangible, that is predictable.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>While yes you can see noticable differences with higher mitigation, it still will always come down to luck of the draw. Is the RNG gonna roll the dice in your favor or no?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>HP is a reliable constant. In the end you dont die because you ran out of mitigation, or resists. You die because you ran out of HP.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Just my 2cp,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Boethias</DIV> <DIV>KOTO</DIV> <DIV>LDL</DIV>

[Gornd]

There are two variables.  Therefore, moderate mathematics will tell you that there is an optimum outfitting based on your gear selection.  However, it really depends on your situation.  Typically speaking, mitigation for a tank far outways hp.  The more you mitigate the less risky things become, especially with spikes.  The less you mitigate a spike, the bigger and riskier that spike is.  I personally shot for max raid mitigation before worrying about HP gear.  Black Scale (for CoP), Den (for rings, i suggest light chitin until you are max mit), SoS has a nice necklace, pants, etc.  After you can break the approx mitigation mark (about 6200 for a lvl 74), concentrate on hp. <div></div>

[WLR]

<DIV>There is a difference in raid tanking and group tanknig. For group tanking, either scenario is fine. However, for raid tanking, mit is > all. Ask any tank that builds him or herself to be a raid tank, and i'd say at least 95% would agree.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So if your play style is that of someone who mainly group tanks, I'd say pick what you feel works best for you.</DIV> <DIV>If you raid tank, go w/ mit.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Sato, 70 Paladin</DIV> <DIV>Forsaken</DIV>

[Tazr]

<P>If your mitigation is too low, you could have 20k hp's and still go down like a rock.</P> <P>With instances and legendary, you can self buff to about 4100-4200, and about 6k hp's.  The mit is what will save your [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] in a tight situation not hp's <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P>

[Tirga]

From a healers perspective, the less damage you take the better. We have limited power/heal timers. Having more health just means our heals will take longer to heal you to full. As an over-exaggerated example. 1000hp 50 mitigation 50hp 1000 mitigation You'll take almost full damage each hit on the first, which makes me cry as a healer. For the second, you take tiny amounts of damage so I can lay down a heal over time and barely worry about you. (druid) In EQ1, Health > armor simply because there was a spell called Complete heal, EQ2 doesn't have that, so it's preferable to have mitigation (both spell and melee though) <div></div>

[Kale]

<div><blockquote><hr>Tirga wrote: In EQ1, Health > armor simply because there was a spell called Complete heal, EQ2 doesn't have that, so it's preferable to have mitigation (both spell and melee though) <div></div><hr></blockquote>Good point Tirga. The absence of Complete Heal does shift the focus slightly. Here's something else to chew on. Suppose a mob dishes out 50,000 points of damage over the course of a fight. With 50% mitigation you're going to negate 25,000 damage. With 60% you'll negate 30,000. With 70% you'll negate 35,000 points of damage leaving you to absorb 15,000. So the difference between 50% mitigation and 70% mitigation is 10,000 hit points in that particular (fictional) encounter. Ask yourself this question: Suppose you had  5,500 hit points and 50% mitigation, or 4,500 hit points and 60% mitigation. Is your extra 1,000 hit points going to make up for the extra 5,000 that the other guy negates based on his 60% mitigation? You're going to tax the healers more with the higher hit points and lower mitigation, because they have to make up 4,000 hit points. Ideally, you want as much of both as you can get. Look around. As the Budweiser ad says, "Be Selective." There's gear to be had with good portions of mitigation and hit points. Final thought - Mitigation is useful even if you go beyond the 80% cap due to the way it works against yellow/orange epic cons. </div>

[Pathin Merrithay]

<DIV>Bear in mind there are alot of extenuating factors in your example that you don't cover Kayne. Many healers don't, in fact, heal at all. They use wards whose effectiveness is based on the mitigation of their target. There are reactives that can cover the full damage done by a higher mitigated tank as opposed to a lower level one. Certainly shoot for both, but any end game tank will tell you that Mitigation > HP's if one is forced to make a choice.</DIV>

[RaistNA]

For a paladin, soloing or grouping, miti > hp. When ur mitigation is higher, ur not going to get hit as hard.  When ur self warding, the higher ur miti is the more hits ull take before ur ward gets knocked down.  In most heroic groups i sit at around 9-11k hps (depending on priest types) and 5.5k-6k mitigation.  The higher my mitigation is, the more i last...thats end of it. <div></div>

[Mmgehenna]

For raiding MIT is tops.  It doesn't matter how many hit points you have when you can't take a hit.  And, ask any healer who they would like to be healing...  Somone with a lot of hit points or someone with high MIT and good hit points.