Combat Roll Analysis: Glancing Blow

Reference: Combat Roll Analysis: General Overlook

The Glancing Blow modifier is a useful stat to reduce all incoming damage by 60% in addition to your armor mitigation. There are no core stats that will increase your Glancing Blow amount, so you can only increase it through Exotics, PUPs, Buffs and some expertise abilities.

The main stat on your statmod tab is called 'Combat Defense: Glancing Blow'. 'Glancing Blow Increase' is the modifier you want to look for if you plan to stack it. The modifier bit has a high ratio of 18, meaning your Exotic Mods will have a maximum value of 1. There are also modifiers called 'Glancing Blow Increase (Ranged)' and 'Glancing Blow Increase (Melee)' . Both of these have a ratio of 14, so you can get a value of 2. The only difference with these is that they only apply to that specific damage type, so you get an extra % towards either ranged or melee, and none for the other. You have to determine what type of damage you see more of.

You could also use your entire exotic slot 'Glancing Blow', 'Glancing Blow Increase (Ranged)', and 'Glancing Blow Increase (Melee)' and get a 3% increase to overall Glancing Blow chance per exotic. However you lose out on a lot of other modifiers you could stack. 'Glancing Blow Increase' can also be made into Powerups that can get around 6. The Ranged and Melee counterparts can be made into powerups as well, and they can reach a value around 7. The good thing about 'Glancing Blow' is that it is a straight % increase, so a +5 is 5%. The modifier 'Glancing Blow' is NOT subject to Diminishing Returns.

Here is a graphic to display how much damage you will mitigate including your armor at different armor values if you roll a Glancing Blow:

Glancing Blow is best stacked with Critical Hit Defense. The reason is that Critical Hit and Strikethrough will completely negate a Glancing Blow combat roll. Reducing your targets offensive capabilities will give you a lot higher defensive stance and give you a lot more survivability. Unfortunately, both of these modifiers are not increased by the core stats, so you have to determine what works best for you.

The electrical elemental proc will make your attacker have a 75% Chance to deliver only Glancing Blows, so if you are serious about Glancing Blow, this elemental type might be your forte. Other status effects that modifier your attackers hit type are unhealthy fixation (Combat Entertainer) and Wind Buffet (Beast Mastery).

It is important to note that when your attacker successfully Glances an attack, you will see flytext stating "Trivial Hit".

Strengths of Glancing Blow

• Strong defense in PVP and PVE- If you have 14000 Armor Value, a Glancing Blow will reduce your incoming damage by 90%. This is huge when being hit by an attack over 9000! Even looking at the graph above, you'll see that having an extra 60% mitigation on top of your armor will reduce damage by a significant amount.
  
• No Diminishing Return - With Glancing Blow being hard to stack, it is good to know that you do not have to suffer with diminishing returns reducing your chance. You'll know what your Glancing Blow chance is from the get go.
• Punishing Blows - When a strong NPC attacks you, they might roll a Punishing Blow. This attack doubles their damage output on that attack. If you're hit by a 40k Punishing Blow, a Glanced attack might save your life
  

Weaknesses of Glancing Blow

• Extremely Tough to Stack - With a ratio of 18 (14 for ranged and melee specific) and your core stats no longer increasing your Glancing Blow chance, your exotic mods will be extremely low in potency. You have to invest a lot in your exotics if you want a high Glancing Blow chance if your profession expertise does not offer anything for you.
• Negated by Attacks - Critical Hit and Strikethrough will make your Glancing Blow worthless. Stacking Critical Hit Defense will help with crits, but you're on your own hoping they don't roll anyways.

Ways to Increase Glancing Blow

• Core Stats - None
• Buffs - Entertainer buff, Glancing Blow Increase (7%), Officer Buff?
  
• Food - None
• Jewelry - None

Professions Strong Against

• All
  

Professions Weak Against

• None
  

Professions Best to Stack it With

• Combat Entertainer
• Jedi
• Smuggler
  

Professions Hardest to Stack it With

• None

Summary

• Glancing Blow Increase - Ratio of 18, Reduces attacker damage by 60% on successful roll
  
• Glancing Blow Increase (Ranged or Melee)- Ratio of 14, works only with specified attack types
  
• Conversion- Ratio 18, Exotics - 1 / PUPs - 6
• Negation - Critical Hit and Strikethrough

Glancing blow is really a powerful stat, great Cosmo, thank you .

(You wrote: "Ways to increase Critical Hit Defense )

Fantastic job as always.

SwoopKiller wrote:

Excellent post -
now...

How do you get 14k armour

There are many ways really. you could get energy layered Recon armor, giving you 8200 Energy. Ent Buff gives you up to 11950. Certain Professions have the innate armor that vary, so as a Commando, you can get 2000 Extra, giving you 13950. Next there is a PSG that adds to Energy Armor value for ranged energy damage only. Or you could get the Stims from static bases that add to your armor values. IG-88 Head gives a short term +5000 to both if you're lucky.

crit bypasses it and punishing blows dont.

Zebidia wrote:

Smuggler is the Great to use it with. We have debuffs that give glancing blow or trivial hits and one (Spot A Sucker) that gives both glance and critical hit defense.

Added thanks

Thanks Cosmo.

Make sure you emphasize that what electrical procs, unhealthy fixation, and the pet special wind buffet are actually doing is modifying a hit type on the attacker.

Also, remember that the defending player who recieves the glancing blow sees "glancing blow" as the flytext, and the attacking player will see the trivial hit flytext, as documented here:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/...topic_id=769783