It seems to me that Scarab of Displacement destroys Styleen's. Displacement gives 1.6% additional mitigation due to the 10 defense skill gained (if I'm remember my formulas right) which, IMO, is substantially more valuable than +block% which is rarely ever used.

Not exactly, since Defense trickles down to Dodge/Parry/Block/Miss% it is still a pretty useful stat even if you are crit-capped.

Isn't dodge WAY cheaper than parry?

Wouldn't straight dodge/block be cheaper?

(edit: meant...less rating per 1%:

Dodge Rating: 18.9 rating grants 1% dodge
Parry Rating: 31.5 rating grants 1% parry
Block Rating: 7.9 rating grants 1% block chance
Defense Rating: 2.4 rating gratns 1 defense skill)

soo....60 defense rating gives 1% block/parry/dodge/miss/anti-crit...3% raw avoidance. cheaper than parry, slightly worse than dodge when you're blocked capped. could you get to the block cap on pure defense? heh...i bet this would crit cap you as well...ignoring block.

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I know Defense adds .04% to Block, Dodge and Parry. But can anybody give me an idea on how it reduces your chance to be crit on a boss versus equal level trash? Thanks in advance

Healers only have the luxury of looking at incomming damage and cancelling heals when there's a buffer between the HP of a tank and the biggest spike he can face. If, as above, a tank has 15k hp and the biggest spike is 8k there will be plenty of opportunities for healers to react. If, however you do a fight like Maulgar where there's very little room at all between total hp and the highest spike healers will be forced to cast heals regardless of whether you are hit or not.
Stacking HP and armour will give a bigger buffer zone and make healers- and yourself as a tank- more able to react to damage and take advantage of your avoidance.

Parry can make you next attack faster than usual. I guess this is why Parry is more expensive than Dodge. For me, I will take Dodge over Parry (I am just a paladin who is starting learning tanking) because pally tanking doesn't rely on white hit a lot, though I still need to hit the mob to have a chance to apply Seal of Vengeance.

You completeld ignored my post where I said I went to fight level 70 mobs as a 60 Warrior with less then 25% block.

When Shield Block was up every attack was either blocked/dodged/parried/missed.

When Shield Block was not up, every attack was either blocked/dodged/parried/missed/crushing.

As the crushing table works like such: For every point of defense you are under 5 times your level, the chance of a crushing blow increases by 2%.

60 vs 63 = 15%
60 vs 64 = 25%
60 vs 65 = 35%
60 vs 66 = 45%
60 vs 67 = 55%
60 vs 68 = 65%
60 vs 69 = 75%
60 vs 70 = 85%

Unlike where most studies come from where it's against bosses with a 15% chance to be crushed, as you can see the mobs I was facing had almost 85% chance, which means that there was a much much higher chance to break through a block and crush if the mechanic worked like that, which it doesn't.

One thing that has happened lately has totally shaken my thoughts on the crushing/block/avoidance relationship. While we were learning Nightbane at the beginning of every pull I used Dabiri's Enigma, and shield block, giving me 114% and change chance to block. There were multiple times where his opening hit was a crushing blow. I have installed fraps in hopes of capturing this activity again, but after getting the fight down we aren't having pull after pull for me to collect the data on.

As far as the crushing->avoidance argument, I have 37.68% dodge/parry, 23.54%, and I've seen crushings while shield block is up, that's a hair over 61% of the hit chart if they are rolled at once, with shield block pushing it well passed 100%, but if crushing/hit/block are rolled as a secondary after a hit is confirmed, then I would be at 98.54% leaving a slim but possible 1.46% chance to be crushed.

Yes, I missed your post.
That's really interesting results. I don't claim to understand how this works - all I do know (and all my post claimed) is that there is evidence that even a slight amount less than 25% block will allow you to be crushed by a boss mob when you're max level and shield block is active.

It is really hard to prove or disprove this simply because of lag and sync issues between server and client. The combatlog is known to lag all the time, often showing 2 normal mob hits at the same 10th of a second when that mob doesn't even thrash or anything like that.
As for Nightbane crushing you on the landing, did the server maybe not see you as facing him? So many things can go wrong in hectic raid situations, they just don't prove or disprove very much imo.
Of course I understand that it might just be true that you need 25+% block to be immune to crushings. Personally, I don't believe so because of my own observations with low base block% and the test Emeraude did. Very low block% , insane chance to crush, slow hitting mobs that don't screw up your combat log. That's a test I can believe in.

is there anyone here who has 13k health unbuffed?

If so, can you please link your profile.

I have 11.5k as a Paladin. Factor in that a warrior has a base 1.2-1.3k advantage over me, plus access to stamina in the ranged slot, plus the facts that I have several gems in need of upgrading to blues and that my boot enchant needs upgrading, and it's pretty easy to see that 13k unbuffed is perfectly attainable for a warrior.

EDIT: So yeah, just look at my armory profile.

here is a link to the european armory :
http://armory.wow-europe.com/charact...onde&n=Kaellie

I have just a little more than 13k unbuff ( 13874 on the armory but it was saved with the untallented shadow-priest buff)

Has for the % block, i have yet to see some crushing with shield block, every time I saw one it was when it was down due to fast hitting boss or lag from me that prevent me to fresh it.

has for armor+stam vs dodge+ parry, I think I will go with 2 sets of stuff and just switch whatever is better for the boss ( the truth is that I can't decided which whould be better )

I have a tough time with block value. Although larger shield slams are appealing, it just really isn't all that effective when mobs are hitting for 3000+. I don't think it's scaled appropriately with the increase in stamina and the increased NPC damage output that's been associated with the extra stamina. It's extremely powerful in non-Heroic 5-mans, but that really isn't saying a whole lot!

Ive personally always found this argument fascinating. A case can be made either way and I enjoy those discussions.

That being said its always been my priority to go for avoidance over pure stamina. Is that extra bunch of stamina\life really worth losing stats that in the long course of a boss fight, become more valuable? As for the argument that healers are going to be healing you anyways, well great. Healer theory craft seems to be about spamming a heal of a certain value that you can use for the duration of the boss fight. Having a higher block\parry\dodge ( in my case dodge, the cheapest of the two ) means in my opinion your healers have to enter the "oh shit" zone less often since you are less likely to have strings of damage like a druid does. We had our Druid MT Gruul and at least for me, it was very predictable looking at the damage he was taking roughly when he would die.

I think a bad example of what I mean is Nightbane, given that Im focusing about 95% of my attention on being ready to fear macro. At this point I seem to severely outgear Prince, but thats a fight where I am focusing purely on mitigation, and very rarely do I go below 60% on his enrage phase, and it is not that rare for the blocks from shield block not always be used in several strings. I know that some of the healers I play with will cancel spells mid cast if I am at 100% health and start to recast, which may be time consuming but I think is worth it.

If we had 6 gem slots, and you put in 6 Solid Star of elunes, and I put in 6 Subtle Living Rubies with full raid buffs you have 830 more life than i do, and I have 2,53% more dodge.

Assuming were buffed to the hilt, I have 15000 life and you have 15830. You have 5.5% more life, and if you have 19% dodge and I have 21.53%, I have 13% more dodge than you do. Granted I realize my example is very simple, and this isnt 2 + 2 = 4 yay! thats the right answer and that its somewhere in between. Given that you are being healed, I believe the dodge is much much more important.

If you were say an OT, and dodged Gruul's hurtful strikes a lot, and only occasionally needed heals at random intervals, then I would subscribe to the armor\stam side of tanking since you want to be able to survive more hits at a reduced rate before the flood of heals get to you, a perfect job for a Druid.

As for this, personally I dont see why you dont wear Styleens and the Hydross trinket, Ive always thought LGG was a terrible trinket (im a fan of passive anything) and now with the boost being fixed to 1500 life, its value for me is greatly diminished.

Morsexy what your failing to realize about "oh shit" moments is unless your fighting a trivial fight like Prince you will need to stack as much hp and armor as you can or that one time you don’t parry the boss will just kill you.

A perfect example is Gruul and reverberation. When your nearing the end of the fight if your rolling around with 15k hp I almost guarantee you are going to die to a reverb at the end when you don’t dodge or parry any of the attacks. On the other hand if you were stacking armor and hp you didn't have to get lucky to survive.

Remembering back on Patchwerk I believe Praetorian put it best when he said what would be easier to heal a tank with massive avoidance or a tank with 15k hp and max armor mitigation.

just check out kungens equip:
http://armory.wow-europe.com/#charac...ridon&n=Kungen
the belt he had was the shat'ari one a blue belt with block. its a really nice avoidance setup.
now kungen wears this beauty:


if you are looking at vestiges equip:
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...gath&n=Vestige
she is taking mostly max hp > avoidance.
her gloves are tier5 which doesn't seem to be implemented yet *lol*

i think it depends on you, what fits best. avoidance or max hp.

maybe its the tauren hp bonus that kungen can focus a little bit more on avoidance.

Prior to BC I didn't worry too much about stam, avoidance was definately my priority. My mindset was the same when my guild did karazhan. Avoidance was, and i believe still is, the way to go for karazhan. But then we stepped into Gruul's lair. On one of our earlier attempts we had everything under control and things were running smooth. Then i saw my hp drop from 100% to 0 instantly. When I looked in my combat log i saw a 12k crushing arcing slash hit at the same time as an autoattack. I was dealt 18k damage instantly. I started stacking stam after that night and now have about 14.2k hp unbuffed. The other night gruul crushing blowed me with an autoattack for 13k and he only had 11 growths on him. Mana seems to be less of an issue in BC due to flask of restoration, pallies & shamans on the same side, and other things such as itemization etc (of course this is coming from a tanks point of a view though, not a healers). So i'd say stacking stam is definately desireable for 25 mans, but for 10 and 5 mans I would go more for avoidance.

demo shout on mob + armor pots on you?

armor is a big deal in there, but i thinks it is correct something around 13k+ unbuffed should be a goal to reach after 490 defense and after that avoidance.

I noticed they are both still using Thunderfury. I'd be interested in knowing their thoughts on at what point to replace it. I used it last night but I honestly didn't notice much difference. Maybe its because I had more rage, or maybe it's because of improved thunderclap but I had a much easier time getting and building rage on multiple targets.

Thunderfury is estimated 88 DPS with the damage proc, right?

If we had wanted a 'max life' tank then no warrior would be tanking right now. Actually, the only advantage a warrior has over a druid tank is that he has some buttons to use to increase mitigation. Name it block, shield wall, lifegiving gem, last stand, potion, whatever. All these are there to provide a buffer in your lifetime. While hp does indeed provide a buffer, you would really want a breather for healers too. After the value where you can stay alive for a respectable time, armor and avoidance are worth more.

Also, stamina is a cheaper stat than others; implies it is less valuable, or maybe its meant to be easily stacked. Either way, mitigation comes first.

Actually it implies that blizzard wanted to make a change for pvp and didn't have anyone competent to explain effective life to them and what the change means for pve.

Simply put, stamina is undercosted at the moment in the basic itemization formula (from a purely effective life point of view) and that's where all of this comes back to.

Yes, avoidance saves mana. Mana doesn't matter when learning new content. There's a billion ways to generate more mana, even overlooking the spriest + pally interaction and in the first minute of any fight it's impossible for a healer to be oom. It's very possible for your tank to die though.

Armor and Stamina are the only ways to increase your actual effective life. Effective life meaning - time until you die at a stated rate of dps. (Not max hp)(I suppose you could argue in favor of some of the damage shield items, but they're pretty minimal). The various "oh shit" abilities make warriors better than druids for this - simply because they act as multipliers on the warrior eff life which is still competitive with druid totals. If we had druids with 30k hp while warriors had 12k or w/e this wouldn't apply, but as long as they're within a factor of 2 of each other, the option to hit shield wall for 10+ seconds of "cannot die" along with the "bosses with slow attacks (hard hitting ones) can't crush" and assorted consumable options easily outweighs the druid's higher sta/ac base.

If parry/dodge were reactionary in the same way that shield wall is (hit parry button get x parry/dodges in a row, cooldown and number based on your rating for example) then maybe some of the avoidance stuff would factor into it more meaningfully, but for the moment - wiping because the boss simply 1 rounded you (where round is the reaction time of your raid) is unacceptable, and the only way to prevent it is more hp/ac (and to a lesser extent for war/pally block) which in turn makes it take longer for you to die and hopefully gives someone a chance to react meaningfully.

Avoidance is a luxury. It's certainly nice for everyone involved - but it cannot be relied on any more than having the boss stop attacking can be.