Todes

I've been reading a great deal of the discussion between different types of Tanks in the Burning Crusades, but I keep running across non specific, best guess valuations for what block actually contributes in terms of total mitigation. Most of block discussions seems to focus around its side effects, rather than what it actually contributes to mitigation in terms of tanking. I thought I might list some of my thoughts regarding block to prompt discussion, and if I am rehashing old material I do apologize. I did attempt to make a search for it on both the Public Forums and Archives.

First, I feel block is probably the most unique mitigation stat in the tanking arsenal. It is not necessarily unique in terms of how many classes possess this ability but it is unique in how it functions. Block shares qualities of both avoidance mitigation(parry/dodge/miss) in terms of its percentile chance to occur, at the same time it possesses similarities to percentile mitigation(armor) in the fact that it mitigates a portion of the damage. These two factors seem to give block a rather low valuation when contrasted with other forms of mitigation.

However. Block possesses several characteristics which strengthen its mitigation significantly. First it blocks a static amount. While most mitigation stats are better when they scale this is untrue for block since it does not occur multiplicatively with any other mitigation value. In fact Block scales inversely with armor. Some math:

Assuming a 10k hit and a 500 block value. (For purpose of the example, no crits, crushes, dodges, misses or parries, the point being here is to evaluate block in a relatively clean environment)

At 25% mitigation
(10,000 * .25)= 7500
7500-500=7000
Block contributes ~6.7% more mitigation

At 50% mitigation
(10,000 * .50)= 5000
5000-500=4500
Block contributes 10% more mitigation

At 75% mitigation
(10,000 * .75)= 2500
2500-500=2000
Block contributes 20% more mitigation

This inverse correlation has a few interesting properties. First it makes block much weaker as base mitigation drops. At the same time it makes block exponentially stronger as we approach the armor cap. I feel this in particular accounts for T3 block values and why it is such a strong tanking set. While the armor value alone of T3 does not approach the armor cap, the use of Stoneshield pots, Inspiration, Improved LOH, etc. do tend to keep warrior tanks at or near the armor cap which keeps block at maximal efficiency. The second property is how block scales in terms of item points. Even if it were possible to push past the armor cap in terms of flat mitigation, the relative cost of more armor relative to more block tends to become prohibitive.

The other interesting property of block and I believe this works almost exclusively with warriors(Unsure as to how far Pallies can push their shield block percentage) is the synergy that block derives from avoidance mitigation. Improved Shield block(if properly geared) provides a 100% chance to block two incoming attacks in a 6 second cycle. By pushing parry/dodge/defense far enough, and this is readily achievable with most gear, you can push a relatively high probability of blocking all incoming attacks. This further strengthens block as a mitigation stat by removing the chance to occur from its mitigation component.

Anyway just a few thoughts on block. While I wish I had some definitive conclusion on block's mitigation contribution, I don't. Information I do not have and would love to figure out. Shield block guarantees a certain number of blocks in a cycle. However, does that preclude additional blocks? Specific example, If a mob has a 1.0 atk speed and hits on every strike in a 6 seconds cycle does shield block simply guarantee you will block two or does it preclude you from blocking any more than two? Other information, what is a normal block value in TBC, normal armor value for pallies and warriors, and finally what is the normal Mob damage per hit and atk speed. I realize a lot of this information isn't attainable atm, but I would love to attach a more quantitative value to what block contributes in the expansion.

 

• goss

It appears paladins have been given Shield Block-like capability through itemization (well Shield Block + Revenge, I guess).

http://thottbot.com/beta?set=628
http://thottbot.com/beta?i=16881

 

• Lurchington

which is pretty funny considering how people complained when it was changed from scaling with attack power

 

◊ Quigon

These numbers become a bit more insane if you deal with non boss mobs. You can effectively mitigate 100% of the mobs damage pretty easily with shield block... as the mitigation cuts the hits to the block value. I'm sure we've all seen videos of warriors soloing this or that without taking damage. So while your point is arbitrary, when you apply it to various encounters the meaning is magnified by the relative difference.

The more interesting thing for me is he value of shield block in terms of aggro... but I believe thats already well known.

 

Suesse

An interesting side effect of increasing block value is its effect on lower-end content. Having 200 or 300 block value may not seem that much when you're tanking a raid boss who hits for several thousand; however, if you hit up non-raid content you'll find that you can fully block many attacks. As a raid geared protection tank, I find that one way to solo high level mobs (60+ non-raid elites, for example) is to keep shield block and demo shout up and auto attack the mob to death (this does not work on caster mobs clearly).

Chance to block has an item budget cost far, far below parry/dodge, so when it is possible to fully block an attack, you can achieve avoidance at a much lower cost.

It seems that the amount of +block itemization is increasing in TBC. What does this mean for ironman adventures?

 

Joy

Remember when attempting to calculate the value of block compared to other mitigation stats, that you cut down on a huge amount of crits and crushing blows. And there weren't many bosses in WoW 1 that would hit more frequently that you couldn't block >90% of attacks with shield block on cool down.

 

Umph

I thought it no longer prevented crushing blows?

 

Suesse

I think that was just a dirty lie.

 

Joy

I'm not sure, I meant to add that to my post but forgot.
I MT'ed my guilds Naxx run this week and never got crit and only a handful of crushings so I presumed it hadn't changed even though I had heard that rumor too. May have been luck though.

Can anyone confirm?

 

Fres

It's a rumor, based around a blue post that referred to crushing blows as the "sacrosanct protection against players killing mobs significantly higher than their level." Other than that one line and poor thesaurus usage on the poster's part, there's been no other inklings that block was ever going to stop mitigating crushing blows.

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/5391/loljs6.png

 

Todes

Whether or not crushing blows will or won't be mitigated by blocking seems a bit speculative. I haven't seen any evidence for or against a shield block change. I was trying to leave it out of the discussion since its simply an unknown and it should be fairly testable by taking a 60 putting him in Karazhan and seeing if he takes crushing and blocks simultaneously when the expansion goes live in a week.


The fact that you can reach 100% physical mitigation with block is very true. Though it has two side effects which I feel makes it difficult to bring into a real tanking environment. First, many of the mobs you would be fighting are significantly outgeared at least in current content. Secondly, rage becomes a significant issue. I know our tanks have had problems on fights in MC and Onyxia because they generated next to no rage from damage and consequently had threat issues. I am unsure as to whether this is an issue in TBC encounters with the itemization present in the beta.

I also wonder how far you push avoidance vs. block in the ideal mitigation scenario. It seems that 33% avoidance would give you the minimal value to maximize block, while another build would try and push that number well over 50% since 4 attacks could come over a 6 second cycle(Using a 2.0 atk speed which I believe is the norm currently, please correct if mistaken). The problem I see with pushing avoidance comes in the sacrifice you make in other areas. It seems that socketing will give a lot more discretion on what values a tank chooses to emphasize come expansion.

 

Ultramax

There are no gems with block value or rating. So all you can socket is sta, avoidance, or sta+avoidance.

 

Fellwraith

If you take a look at how they've re-tuned a number of epic shields in this build, I also think this is going to become a necessary part of the warrior/paladin damage mitigation strategy in the future. The AC on several shields was increased ~10% and the block value was increased 20+%. Druids got the gift of greater mitigation this patch, but so did some warriors and paladins. I'm curious if this will continue with future itemization, and if so, did they reduce the cost of block value and AC on shields somehow?

In the early raiding days, you'd get something like a draconic deflector, and your total block value *might* hit 60. Compared to incoming damage in a place like MC, where the hits would be ~1-2K after armor, that wasn't a whole lot of mitigation. "Block is useless" came the hue and cry from the audience. "I only need block rating to hit 25%" claimed others. However, as time has gone on, more and more block is getting piled on items and it's not uncommon to see warriors with 300 or more block value. If you're taking 3k damage on a mitigated hit (not uncommon), that's 10% mitigation every time you block. The amount of AC you would need to achieve that same level of mitigation would be huge.

If you think about it, 300 block is basically a guaranteed 600 less damage every 5 seconds for an effective cost of 8 rage if you have improved shield block. Compare that to PW:S for a priest which is 1-1.1K less damage every 15 seconds.

One other thing I'd point out is that tanking warriors aren't getting a lot of dps or base threat increases from now until 70. Shield slam may be the best way to bridge the gap between scaling dps and slow/non-scaling moves like heroic strike, revenge, and sunder.

 

Darkmantle

Shield block scaling fast is a wonderful thing. It gives prot warriors a decent scaling threat move. With devastate being fixed now thier agro might scale fine into BC with the high block values on items.

 

nellkee

With those really high block values, i think the most interesting thing is that it may be easier to predict the amount of damage the tank receive compared to dodge/parry (so it'll be easier to heal)
I've thought about it and I think it's a good idea to begin to drop some avoidance stuff and start getting +block value/%block equipement

 

Evalara

I've always been a big fan of Enchant Shield - Lesser Block on my warrior alt, as his middling gear and lack of Imp Shield Block leaves much to be desired in terms of keeping Revenge lit up. It gives 2% at 60, and there's a new one in TBC that gives 3% at 60. Not sure how far down that scales at 70 and whether you would consider trading in +15 stam for it, but it's a thought.

 

Whiteknight

Does shield slam really scale 1:1 with shield block as was implied above? I'd always been under the impression that it was more like 1/3 of your block value is added to damage or something like that...

 

Andrise

No, it's 1:1.

 

Muggins

Bit of a side thought but are there any decent Shield Spikes hanging around in TBC?

With the spotlight on blocking and block value an item that basically gives you a free DoT without rage expenditure would be fairly attractive as long as the damage range was right.

Also i know its a longshot but i don't suppose anyone has ever had the chance to test Shield Slam with a spike in place to see if there's any benefit?

Edit: After a bit of a search it appears that the best spike so far is the felsteel one, which is a thrallmar/hh exalted recipe:

http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=7575

Felsteel Shield Spike
Requires Blacksmithing (350)
Use: Attaches a Felsteel Spike to your shield that deals 26-38 damage every time you block with it.

 

Rule

Yep, 1:1. At 60, with current lvls of +block (tier 3), sapphiron trinket and shield mastery talent, you can crit shield slam on a fully sundered mob for upwards of 2k. That's with around 300 ish block, iirc. In TBC, if you stack block on almost every piece of gear and have t4/t5, you can get upwards of 500 block value. AND if the sapphiron trinket and the lvl 70 heroic badge turnin trinket (http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=3296) stack, you could get up to 3500ish shield slam crits.

Don't know how viable that would be tho, since your other stats would stink pretty badly. It would probably be like those old posts on the warrior forums of that guy who stacked crit rate up to like 45% using leather and mail gear, but only had like 500 AP and 3k armor :P

Formerly of Immortality on Skullcrusher
Formerly of Lost Anarchy on Ner'Zhul
Currently inactive, but might try out WOTLK, but then again...

 

Moogul

Thinking a long these lines, I was wondering - is Sword and Board going to be the optimum grinding configuration for Prot Warriors? Devestate w/ focused rage, plus 1h spec made DW look like fairly decent damage for a Prot warrior, but would using a shield and a load of +block items be more efficient? I've been a fan of +block for ages, back before they changed shield slam, and it seems that by doing this you could get a warrior who takes very little damage, but still outputs dps (shield slam + devestate). Even caster mobs, the bane of a sword and board warrior, become much easier with spell reflection.

Whilst dps would obviously be less than just DWing, the lower downtime (due to hardly ever taking any damage) could make it a more efficient way of grinding. Would be interesting to know if anyone's tried it out on beta.

Ijago <Casual Jerks>

 

Rule

I tried out grinding as prot some on beta, and it didn't seem too bad. You kill slower than fury, but not a whole lot slower, and take far less dmg, so have less downtime. It's also better as you level, since as your +hit goes down, fury gets worse and worse.

You kill about as fast as arms, maybe a tad slower on average, but again take far less damage. Arms is significantly better than prot or fury at killing 2 mobs at a time with sweeping strikes and cleave, however. Grinding as arms also has the added benefit of not being a free HK (comparitively) if you're on a pvp server and anticipate getting ganked.

Prot is also very good at killing higher level mobs compared to the other 2 specs, altho it's pretty slow going. Like, at lvl 60 I was able to kill lvl 64 bog lords in zangarmarsh without TOO much trouble, but would still have to eat/bandage fairly often. Lvl 62's are no trouble at all tho.

I'd say what spec you level with depends on what gear you have, and if you'll spend a lot of time instancing or not. If you have good tanking gear (tier 2 and above), and intend to instance a fair bit, i'd recommend it. If you have good fury gear, i'd spec fury for a few levels until you either get some good tanking gear, or a good 2h, and then go arms (or prot) at about level 65 or so. Fury would benefit by using a darkmoon heroism card along with dual crusader enchants, anything to reduce downtime.

If you do go prot to grind with, i'd recommend getting your block rating as high as you can (so you don't have to use shield block if you don't want to), your crit rating as high as you can, and somewhat balanced other stats. And definitely pick up imp sunder, it helps tremendously when trying to get up enough sunders while grinding anything to use devastate.

Formerly of Immortality on Skullcrusher
Formerly of Lost Anarchy on Ner'Zhul
Currently inactive, but might try out WOTLK, but then again...

 

xarg

The problem is, for at least the first 4 levels, the majority of people are insanely overgeared and blitz through content. At level 63 I was taking on level 65's in succession with virtually no downtime. On the occasion that you do have to med it 's a short 8 second bandage and then get stuck in again.

To take on physical only elites though, prot is fantastic.

 

◊ Cathela

Block rating in general seems very hard to come by in TBC. As a Prot paladin this is pretty frustrating, because it's really the ideal stat for grinding out of that spec. It's odd that block rating has a low itemization value but is so difficult to find. I wonder if there's a deliberate reason for that.

Block value on the other hand shows up quite often.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

zork

Well there are so many good items out there and its hard to decide.

tanks can go three ways or combine them

stamina only (gathering items with max stamina and defense)
block (gathering block value. block rating, defense)
mitigation (gathering, dodge, parry, defense)

With stamina only you may get 1000 stamina unbuffed at 70...thats huge.

I think these block items are nice, but i don't know...block value does nothing if a hit thats not blocked may kill you.

Here are 2 lists of block items:

block value:
http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4&filt...crv=0,1,1#00Mz
block rating:
http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4&filt...crv=0,1,1#00Mz

The are some lvl 100 epics which are very nice and you can make a superb def tank equip with these.
There is one item for each plate slot.

http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4.4&fi...1,1,1,1#00kVzc

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