Understanding Resolve
Resolve is just Crit mit 2.0. Each NPC has a resolve value, lets say for example, 1500. For every 1 point you are under 1500, you will receive 1% extra damage, and you will do 1% less out going damage. A few random examples to put this into context.
NPC Resolve: 1500. Your resolve: 1450. You will take 150% damage (you normally take 100% damage, so you are taking an extra 50% more), and you are doing 50% of your normal damage. Boo on you.
NPC Resolve: 1500. Your resolve: 1375. You will take 225% damage (you normally take 100% damage, so you are taking an extra 125% more, this is MORE than double the amount). You will do 0 damage to the mob. You literally will not be able to damage the mob at all.
NPC Resolve: 1500. Your resolve: 5000. You will take 100% damage, and you are doing 100% of your normal damage. There is ZERO benefit to exceeding a resolve value, there are only NEGATIVE effects if you are under the resolve value.
Understanding Raiding Tiers
There are 8 raiding tiers this expansion, and they were seemingly designed to be as confusing as humanly possible. On a positive note, they are at least completely linear.
Here are the tiers, with their in-game designated names, in order, with the resolve on each mob, and the resolve on the gear the mob will drop.
Resolve Requirement - Resolve on armor
Raid 1: 1512 - 75
Raid 2: 1672 - 80
Raid 1 Mythic: 1797 - 85
Raid 3: 1873 - 90
Raid 2 Mythic: 2032 - 95
Raid 4: 2112 - 100
Raid 3 Mythic: 2273 - 105
Raid 4 Mythic: 2395 - 110 (assumed)
Example: You are fighting a Raid 2 Mythic mob (which is actually t5, out of the 8 tiers). You will want to have at least 2032 resolve, so you do not take any additional damage, and you are doing 100% of your damage. When he dies, he will drop armor pattern with 95 resolve, and any jewelry/weapons/etc will also have 95 resolve on them.
Note: There is an exception - Bonus loot.
Bonus Loot
Some mobs (I don't have much detail on this) have a chance of dropping what I'm calling 1 piece of 'Bonus loot'. If this bonus loot drops, it is from the tier ABOVE the mob you killed. For example, if you killed a Raid 2 mythic mob (drops 95 resolve gear) and he drops a bonus loot item, you will get a 100 resolve item from the chest. Bonus loot does NOT take place of an existing item, you get it as an additional item. Most (maybe all?) mobs drop 1 pattern plus 2 pieces of loot (not including infusers/adorns). When you get a bonus piece, you get 1 armor pattern, 2 pieces of loot for the proper tier, and 1 piece of gear from the tier above. Armor patterns can NOT drop as bonus loot.
Raid Weekly Quests
There are 3 raid weekly quests, t1, t2, and t3. Each requires 3 kills from a mob in that tier. Note: T# AND T# Mythic mobs will count towards this. This means you could kill a t1 mob, and two t1 mythic mobs to complete the raid 1 weekly.
Raid weeklies are actually useful this time around. When you finish one, you get a random piece of loot from that tier, or up to 2 tiers above it. It can be an armor pattern, a piece of armor (basically a pattern that was unpacked already without your choosing), or a piece of jewelry.
Example:
T1 raid weekly is considered t1 (drops 75 or 80 or 85 resolve gear).
T2 raid weekly is considered t2 (drops 80 or 85 or 90 resolve gear).
T3 raid weekly is considered t4 (remember, that T1 mythic is actually t3) (drops 90 or 95 or 100 resolve gear)
I want to re-iterate something here. If you get a armor pattern (that you have to unpack at the merchant) it counts for 'Armor Patterns' section below. If you get a piece of armor (already unpacked) it does NOT count towards armor patterns below.
Armor Patterns
Welcome to hell.
In order to use an armor pattern, you MUST have already used an armor pattern of the tier below. The exception, is t1 (75 resolve). It can be consumed without restriction. In short, this means you need 56 pieces of armor this expansion. Yes, Fifty fucking six.
Lets take helm for example.
Lets say you get a t1 pattern (75 resolve). You can go turn it in, and you get a 75 resolve helm. Yay!
Next, you get a t3 pattern (85 resolve). You can NOT use it, because you don't have the 80 resolve helm yet. Boo.
Lets say you kill a t7 mob (105 resolve). Unless you have a helm pattern that was used for: 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, 100, this means you can't use it... and likely will never be able to use it, unless you are EXTREMELY lucky...
So.. how to get armor?
That's a very good question, without a good answer. You will need to track every single armor pattern, every single person gets, for every single tier. You will also want to track which pieces of armor they have which came from a weekly but were NOT in a pattern. From there, you hand out gear in hopes people can complete as many tiers as possible. I always go for the biggest upgrade. For example, if someone has a 75 and 80 resolve pattern, and a 90 and 95 resolve pattern (which they can't use, because they are missing the 85 resolve pattern) and a 85 resolve pattern drops, that would net them a 15 resolve gain (going from 80, to 85-90-95). So that person would get it over someone who didn't have the 90 and 95 patterns.
Unpacked Armor?
Unpacked armor has a chance to come from raid weeklies, and honestly, this is what you want to get lucky with, especially with t3. If you happen to get a piece of armor from t3 raid weekly with 90/95/100 resolve on it, you can equip it immediately, even if you do not have the previous tiers. It does NOT count towards unlocking the next tier, but since that is not very realistic to finish this year, who cares.
Does the armor matter?
Unfortunately yes. In order to kill t6 and t8 mobs (t4 / t4 mythic respectively), you must have a black adornment slot in all 7 slots of armor, and have a black adornment in each slot (you get them from the t3 weekly). Black adornment slots are ONLY on gear with 90 resolve or higher.
So... really, how to get the armor?
I don't really have any kind of advice for this, other than keep grinding, try to not waste any timers... but ultimately, we are waiting for DBG to increase the drop rate on patterns. Which I will explain why it needs to happen shortly.
Jewelry
Hey, some good news! Jewelry is completely linear. There are no rules, or other oddball things going on here. You get a 100 resolve piece of jewelry, you can equip it, even if you have a 75 resolve ring currently.
"bad" news, is some jewelry is NOT itemized very well. For example, the following slots need 2 items: Charms, rings, ears, wrists. You will get about 5 times more charms than ears and wrists, and likely double the amount of rings than ears. It's annoying, but not even remotely as bad as the armor pattern situation.
Where does the armor drop?
I created a little excel sheet to track which mob drops what armor. Here is what I have come up with so far.
Slot across the top, the amount of resolve it has on the left, and where it drops in the middle.
(Mit) means it was a mitigation piece, (Both) means mit and non-mit pieces, and nothing means it's non-mitigation.
The problem with the armor drops
The biggest problem comes from R-90 drops. If you have access to contested, then Helm/Shoulders/Gloves are taken care of. Done.
That means you need chest pieces, forearms, legs, and boots.
Now, chest pieces are NOT a big deal, because last expansion ethereal BPs have a black slot, and 87.5 resolve. I'll also talk about Bps specifically after. Shoulders are in the same boat, ethereal from last expansion work fine for now.
This means we're really focused on forearms, legs, and boots. The only place these drop, are from t4 (which is t3 normal mobs). There are 3 of them in the game, and all on a 5 day lockout.
Air - Guardian, he can drop a helm (worthless because of contested), shoulders (worthless because of contested), forearms, or boots. So you have a 50% chance of not getting an usable armor pattern. That means 0.5 every 5 days, or 1 every 10 days.
Earth - Vereorgus - Legs or boots. Both needed, so 1 every 5 days, or 2 every 10 days.
Earth - Warlord - Chest (worthless - see above), forearms. So, 0.5 every 5 days, or 1 every days.
This means that assuming you never miss a single timer, you will get 4 pieces of usable 90 resolve gear, every 10 days.
Lets do some math on that. First, we are going to assume equal drop rates on all the pieces of armor (therefore my values of 0.5 are correct).
Secondly, we're going to assume you have only 24 people in your raid force. While this isn't realistic, lets go with the 'best' scenario for now.
There are 3 slots we're talking about, forearms, legs, and boots. That means 3 slots for every player, and 24 players. 3 * 24 = 72.
You can get 4 pieces every 10 days. Lets see how many times we have to run these 10 day periods.
72 pieces needed, divided by 4 pieces, is 18. This means we need 18 clears to get this armor. Each clear is 10 days, so that's 180 days. That means from the time you start clearing all 3 t3s, you have SIX MONTHS before you can go after t6 gods (t4 from the list). If you ever have to change a member out, add 10 more days every time.
This happens with t1 and t2 (75 and 80 resolve) armor also, but to a lesser extent, because there are a few more mobs, and you start getting these drops quicker than waiting for t3 mobs. However, helms for example, drop from 1 mob (air - Baltaldor) and he is on a 5 day lockout. So you need 120 days to retrofit your entire raid with t1 helms.
Breastplates
This is a whole new issue...
T1 BPs only come from T1 Ragrax.
T2 BPs only come from T2 Ragrax.
You can't spawn them at the same time, you have to pick which version you want to kill.
Keep in mind, you can NOT use a t2 BP without having the T1 pattern BP.
This timer is on a 3 day timer. This means you will spend 72 days doing t1 Ragrax. To turn around and do 72 days doing t2 Ragrax. You're now up to 144 days of farming for BPs.
To which, I believe 100 resolve BPs come from T3 Ragrax, so now you got another 72 days to get those, then another 72 days to get 110 resolve BPs from T4 Ragrax (again, 100 and 110 resolve BPs are just a guess they come from here, but if it's a different slot, the we're in the same boat). So you're talking 288 days of farming Ragrax, JUST to get patterns for 24 toons. That's just shy of 1 year of farming from day 1, without missing a single timer, and without replacing a single toon, to get them armor from a single mob.
How we keep track of armor:
This should be pretty clear, as there is a legend in the top left. Just duplicate this 24 times, once for each person in the raid.
This is an example of a toon whom gets all the gear first.
(For non-patterns, we usually mark down everything above it. For example, you will see a CHEST of 85 resolve NP (non-pattern). We tick off the 75/80 NP boxes also, to make it loot more clear that they don't need those non-patterns. Of course, in this example, I missed doing the same thing for the helm... oops.
Added info:
There are 3 different things going on with armor. Weekly piece of armor (not in a pattern), a pattern (from weekly or from a mob), and an unlocker.
Piece of armor: This does not count towards anything. It's a use it until you unlock other pieces.
A pattern: You can only unpack each pattern, if you have unlocked a pattern from each previous tier. For example, to unlock a t3 pattern, you need to have unpacked a t1, t2, t1 mythic piece of armor, then you can unpack the t3 piece.
An unlocker: This unlocks all previous tiers, allowing you to instantly buy the current pattern, without getting any previous tiers.
Note: You can 'stack' unlockers and patterns. For example, if you got a 90 boot unlocker, you could then use a 95 boot pattern.