I think shield block can be 1 of 2 things end game.

1. In 5 mans and heroics to some extent it can be overpowered, reducing most of the damage you take, considering its easy to have a high shield block rating and shield block ability makes it overpowered in this setting.

2. Now in a 25 man raid setting, where bosses hit a lot harder shield block value becomes all but useless, I mean its nice takin 500-700 damage off of each hit that gets through but its more of mitigation over time and will never save you from anything really. This is not to be confused with the shield block ability and negating crushing blows, just the actual shield block value.

My idea is to keep shield block rating as is, but instead of a standard shield block value, each shields block
value is set to a certain percentage, say 20% and block value is converted into extra percentages but never getting to be too much. So say a normal mob is hitting for 500, 20% of that would be 100 taken off your mitigated damage from armor, you still get rage, reduce damage and its not overpowered. Now in a raid setting, if your gettin hit for 5k a pop, that would be 1000 damage reduced, now this isn't overpowered but its a much nicer reduction in damage and would scale with damage being dealt. And the shield block value would add small percentages because if your shield block% went over 25-30% range then yes it would start being too good on raid mobs.

I realize since the game is balances around our mediocre block value this would make everything easier right now so it would take tuning but Ive heard rumors of the devs taking out crushing blows altogether in an upcoming patch so if this is true than shield block seems to be the best way to increase our mitigation or druids will be the best tanks hands down.(Not that that would be the end of the world, just that we would need something to compensate)

Agreed with Rott. The threat is the reason tanks take shield block value, not the mitigation.

430ish base damage + block rating

600 block rating

~1000 damage per slam. Innate threat of the skill, plus the damage, modified by defense stance and defiance bonus = a crap ton of threat....like 1500 EASY

That extra 400-500 block value can EASILY account for 100 threat per second, and that means 100-130 more dps per dps'er....given 12-15 dps players, that 500 shield block just allowed you to add something like 1500+ more dps to the raid. Which is like 1.5 more decent rogues.

You guys are kinda missing the point, I agree the threat is nice and nothing is changing about the threat scaling except the formula since you'd be blocking for more on raid mobs.

All Im talking about is the mitigation, nothing else would change, As it is right now, shield block rating is all but useless on our gear, we don't need to to block attacks because we already do block every attack that isn't dodged/parried or missed, and the only reason to up your block value at the moment is shield slam threat which is fine right now. Im pretty sure the devs don't intend for shield block rating and shield block value aside from the threat it produces to be useless. Especially if they remove crushing blows and change nothing else, we would need some kind of way to mitigate more damage(and paladins too) to come even close to the mitigation of a bear.

TBC moved all ratings away from flat percentages in the first place to allow for level based scalability. Even if they changed it to Shield Block Value rating (or something) it would not be a helpful change since SBv serves threat generation more than it does damage reduction. Besides, 600+ per hit is not an insignificant amount of reduction. Although I just wondered, is that pre or post armor reduction?

Why should warrior's have mitigation close to a feral druid? That's the reason for a feral druid's existence. Warriors avoid more damage than a feral druid, that's how it's designed to work.

To quote the great Samir Nagheenanajar, "Horrible, this idea."

But isn't that already the case now? As it is, yes, druids have more of a health buffer and armor to reduce physical damage slightly more, but warriors and paladins have better avoidance (parry) and the ability to push crushing blows off the hit table (shield block/holy shield).

I guess I just don't see how this could be accomplished without turning druids into 3rd rate tanks.

So you're saying if the devs in a future patch remove crushing blows (The main reason warriors and pallys close the gap on druid mitigation) then everything is ok? And you might wanna check some druids raid buffed mitigation levels, they can easily be in 45-55% range before armor comes into play.

But basically in summary you're saying that it would be fine for druids to have the same avoidance as a warrior, more HP in most cases and a ton more armor, with crushing blows removed from the game and its balanced.

When comparing druid tanks to warrior/paly tanks, it is important to remember what happense to the classes as gear levels increase.

At karazhan gear levels, warriors get normal hit for aproximately what a druid will get crushed due to armor differences. However, as that warrior's gear level increases, he is gaining both avoidance and armor mitigation. The druid on the other hand only gains avoidance as he/she should already be armor capped at 75% mitigation. Consequently, as the gear levels increase, raid groups will get more benifit from plate wearer's ability to nearly eliminate crushing blows.

The above is the reason that warriors do not need anything to set them apart from druid tanks. They are already superior, and the gap widens as gear improves.

I don't have a link, Ive read it on EJ that it was in a dev chat, IRC or something, that crushing blows were something they wanted to look at, and yes it would require a lot of reworking on warriors and paladins, we all know because of that it might never happen.

But if you want to talk about the here and now, I would trade whatever mitigation this new shield block value would give in terms of pure avoidance any day. So if it gives us an extra 10% overall shield block mitigation, Id trade 10% dodge or parry any day. Less spikey damage, even flow of rage, easier to heal, yes please.

I think you cheapen the amount of mitigation that comes from blocked.

Blocking 600 damage on a 6K attack is 10%. I think that's a pretty nice chunk of damage to not be taking. With my trinket and 2 pc T5 bonus I block like 950 damage. I would hardly call that "all but useless".

Rott like I said earlier, druids can and do have just as much pure avoidance as a warrior, and most raid warriors gear for stam and armor not to be like a druid but because thats the best way to gear, you can't count on avoidance to save you because eventually the worst case scenario is going to happen and your avoidance will fail.