"During the 1.8 bugged shield block I went out with 310 defense and fought level 60 ghosts in Deadwind Pass. I killed them all using just autoattack in defensive stance, and kept Shield Block refreshed every time it cooled down. In over 2000 attacks made while Shield Block was active, I got zero critical hits. There is no question that Shield Block removes critical hits from the combat table. Sadly, I lost the data from that testing to a corrupted file for further analysis of how miss/dodge/parry fell out from it.

And so I am now testing crushing blows, and will be able to answer the dodge/parry/miss question as well. It is a longer process of course, since we don't have the Shield Block bug anymore. "

- Satrina

Basically this is saying that a crit and a block cannot both happen in PVE (we know it can for pvp). From that, it is implying that a block takes precedence over a crit, that is, crit AND hit are replaced by block in the combat table (assuming one table). The idea of one combat table to me seems pretty unlikely since there will be very little room for regular hits from a lvl 63 mob (15% CBs, 8ish%crit, your mitigation, all this leaves about 20% left over for hits).

Design flaw? Or working as intended?

I don't know -- one of our warriors with firsthand experience in this area might be able to comment more insightfully.

I discussed this exact issue with Moz back when I tanked a raid spamming Shield Block the whole time and didn't notice a single crit or crushing blow. I was very suprised by the results but didn't go out and test it as much as the person referenced in the OP did. Seems to work the way it's described for me.

I too did a bunch of testing with another mt on my old warrior back when shield block was bugged, and we didn't see a single crit or crushing blow while blocking.

I want paw block. And pawrry.

Oh god.


Oh god


That was weapons-grade bad, beef.

Blizzard uses a roll combat system.
Basically when a mob attacks, the game rolls a dice (lets say 1-1000 for arguments sake, assuming 15% Parry, 10% Dodge, 20% Block).

If the game rolls 1-150 You Parry
151-250 you Dodge
251-450 you Block
450-900 Normal Attack
901-950 Miss
951-1000 Crushing Blow

Since the game will never hit more than one number, you will never have a partially blocked crushing blow, and if you get over 100% Block, you simply can not be crit/crushing blowed.

The table is extremely simplified, but the concept is the same. (Imp. Shield Block after Unbalancing Strikes is extremely useful for preventing crits/crushing in this way also).

Honestly, it seems like a design oversight, but since it would require an overhauling of simple combat mechanics I doubt we would see a fix until expansion.

Quoting this for horror.

That emperor thread is going places. And I don't think it's anywhere I want to be.