Regarding first post - wouldn't it be easier for us to compile several posts in a row (gigantic posts that we've come up with) and a mod just copy/paste to the first post?

Or would it be easier to remove the first post and give it to one of our more frequent EJers?

The "best" solution in the long run would probably be to make a Compendium article similar to the DPS one, but it's a large undertaking.

Yes, and No.
The TTT was originally designed to be a place where great minds produced lexicons of truth; at the moment we make do with distilling current wisdom. Which is to say, when I receive a submission I come to the class forums and check that what is being said is in agreement with what is in here. In effect, you are all peer reviewers of any (current or potential) DK TTT article, it simply requires that one of you sit down and write up the summary. The majority of TTT articles begin life as class mega-threads for this reason.

The purpose of the wiki is pretty simple, someone elects themselves to maintain the article; if you want the job step up and write the article. The author can edit their article, along with editors (admin). It is the authors responsibility to keep it up to date, if they can not do this someone else needs to step up or the article is removed. In essence it is the job of the TTT author to:
"... winnow through this thread here and pick out the important info... Arrange it neatly into concise sections, link them back to the original [article]."

Calling it a defence cap is fine; very few people will quibble over that. And yes, he was clearly referring to the point where you become crit immune, whatever you wish to call it. The issue isn't the name, it's that he was completely wrong about the implications of hitting it for gearing.

Edit: Fine, call it a soft cap then. There is a point where the effectiveness of defense rating is sharply reduced. The trick is that it's still an excellent stat, and much better than parry rating, no?

Eh... I'd personally rather not call it a cap simply because it's not a cap in any way/shape/form. While most of he posters on EJ will know what someone means by a "defense cap", I'm sure that a very large number of players will think that it's an actual CAP.

Just call it the point where you become crit immune and leave it at that because it's 100% true AND not a misnomer.

If it's still an excellent stat, then its effectiveness really hasn't been reduced that much, has it? Calling it any kind of cap leads to all kinds of confusion among people who are trying to learn tank itemization. They're used to things like the hit cap, where it's great til you hit the cap then utterly worthless after that point. With defense, it's great til you hit the point where you're immune to crits and still great afterwards. Call it "540 defense" or "crit immune", but "defense cap" is misleading and counterproductive.

In point of fact, thanks to diminishing returns on the avoidance stats, I'm starting to believe that defense may currently be the best avoidance stat, point for point, because it spreads out the DR over three different stats. With the addition of direct mitigation advantages through Icebound Fortitude, that just further improves its stock.

For the purposes of gearing a tank, it is an effective cap until other priorities are fulfilled. Gear to def cap, then concentrate on other targets.

RE An article for the TTT:

How are we supposed to get a single coherent article up there when we cant even decide as a group if a term like 'Defence Cap' is valid or not The English language is full of sayings and phrases that don't exactly line up with their meaning. But if people understand the concept, the actual words used do not matter.

Which major and minor glyphs would all of you recommend for a Frost tank?

The flaw in your own argument is that defense is still, arguably, the best avoidance stat to go for after the 'cap', making such a term ludicrous.

Hell, the last time I remember hearing "defense cap" used in a serious manner during raiding was in WoW Classic.

I'd argue that on an internet theory forum, where the only way to convey one's meaning is through the written word, semantics are of the UTMOST importance.

I've seen a couple posts on the past couple pages that say defense is the best avoidance stat. I really don't think that's the case.

For starters, as a DK you're only getting 3/4 of the value of defense rating. It's budgeted as something that also provides block rating in the itemvalue budget. If you don't block, you're not getting full value.

Warriors, paladins and DKs all have the same dodge and parry caps (edit: in this case they truly are caps, unlike the semantics in regards to defense above). That means all of us have the same DR curves. DKs have significantly more base parry rating because of their forceful deflection ability. This additional rating means you're even further up the parry curve and starting to bump into much harsher DR on the avoidance stat and derive less parry per point of defense than a warrior or paladin would in comparable gear. In addition, the DR curve for parry is nearly twice as steep as the DR curve for dodge. That means you need a significant amount of dodge in order for parry to be equivalent. You've already got a lot of parry rating, getting more via defense or parry rating is not as productive as getting straight dodge.

The only way defense would be significantly better as an avoidance stat is if the DR curve on Miss is considerably flatter than that of dodge (and it seems unlikely to me that would be the case). The only strong argument for defense over dodge is that defense affects icebound fortitude next patch. It has nothing to do with diminishing returns. This thread over at tankspot is worth reading if you're looking to get educated on how the math works (spend some time looking at post #32 in particular).

Aha, but I was careful in my wording; I said defense was probably the best avoidance stat to gear for, even post crit immune--I did not say that it may necessarily(sp?) be the best stat to gear for period .

Being without a desktop right now, I can't do item point value comparisons between defense, dodge, and parry, let alone stamina (which gets outragiously good as each point of stamina takes effect after your average mitigation (avoidance + DR) is taken into accout) but I recall mention of defense being comparable to dodge in avoidance, post crit immune, and, therefore, superior to it as it spread out your avoidance over 3 stats (chance to be missed/dodge/parry) rather than one.

And, for the record, the only reason to not take defense as a Druid--back when we only got 3% crit immunity from talents--was because it only affected dodge/miss and both dodge rating and agility povided better point for point avoidance; however, Death Knights benefit from the three avoidance stats that defense contributes to and only get shorted on block chance (which is really more DR than avoidance since crushes don't exist anymore).

If we graph marginal returns from each additional point of defence, we're going to see it extremely high up until 540, then a sharp discontinuity; the 541st point and all following points are much less valuable than the 540th point because we're only receiving partial benefits. (The fact that they're still very valuable doesn't reduce the magnitude of the decrease.)

We have a phrase for this - "soft cap". I really don't see what's confusing about it, or why we need to start looking for a new phrase. It's the same mechanic we see with hit rating (8% soft cap, after which yellow melee hits are hit capped) and expertise rating (6.5% soft cap, IIRC, after which dodges are eliminated). All three are routinely called soft caps both here and elsewhere in the theorycrafting community. I really don't see the issue here.

Incidentally, as far as the defence versus dodge question, this tankspot thread seems to answer that fairly comprehensively.

Yep, that first post pretty much covers it, assuming it's targeted at Death Knights or, at the very least, generic enough for the three plate tanking classes to use interchangibly.

Of course, that very same post notes how defense remains extremely solid even if stacked in the complete absence of any of the other avoidance stats so I'm still going to stay firmly entrenched on the "what def cap?" side of the discussion. If you want to say anything concrete about defense in a tanking bible simply say something along the lines of:

"Stack until crit immune. After that, it remains a solid stat about equal to dodge (both of which are superior to parry) and suffers from diminishing returns just as the pure avoidance ratings do."

It allows you to be completely truthful without bringing the word "cap" into the equation as there does not appear to be a magical dropoff in those numbers (in fact, defense gets better than dodge if the "Miss Cap" (oh no :-/) is higher rather than lower). "Diminishing Return(s)" is the best way to state/phrase what we're after here, especially considering that it's the language that blizzard is using (which isn't always the best, mind you, but there's something to be said for consistency).

Edit:

For what it's worth, I've only referred to a Hit "Cap" as the point where +Hit no longer shows any benefit so, at the very least, I'm being consistent. Of course, the classes I've tended to play over the long term have only needed 1H/2H hit so I didn't have to deal with an asynchronous white/yellow hit cap, but....

If we can convince everyone to adopt a new terminology, it would probably be most correct to refer to 540 defense as the 'defense floor', as in a minimum target.

Even without considering DR and block, def rating is really close to dodge rating; if wowwiki is right (and I think it is), you need 41 def rating for 1% of avoidance (miss+dodge+par), while you need 39,35 dodge rating for 1% of dodge. That's 1,65 point "lost", 4%.

That's the (really small) down side of def rating; let see the up side:

- it spread out the avoidance, so they are less subject to DR
- it add some miss, who is still on when you are stunned/feared/hited from back, etc
- next patch it will increase IBF


So yea I still think def rating is better than dodge rating (and parry rating is way out); I didnt made any math or graph but I dont see how it could turn around.

EDIT; didnt see the link in Lazare post, who point to some proper math for def vs dodge rating; however, even with the lowest miss_cap, it show that it's better to have 1,5 to 2x more def than dodge, so my point about DR is still true. And there is still the other good thing about def (the miss thing and the IBF bonus, when we get that patch)

Are you speaking about current Frost of 3.0.8 Frost? I'm going to assume 3.0.8 Frost since you should be Unholy currently for healing sake.

The major glyphs are going to be these:
Frost Strike
IBF
Icy Touch
OB
Unbreakable Armor

Each have their pros and cons. As long as I'm 2H it'll be FS + OB + UA glyphs for me.

Minor stays the same for the most part, no matter what: Pestilence, Horn of Winter, and Blood Tap. I could see Horn of Winter dropped for Ghoul. An increase of 20RP in a pinch situation could be useful.

51 pages of people using "Defense Cap" and then all the sudden some one gets all touchy about it. If people stop complaining, and the majority agrees upon the usage of "defense floor" - I'm fine with that.

Yeah. It's going to confuse some people since the Axe is technically classified as Sword. Thus, I'm only going by the stats people post - which the +defense is highly superior to the +90 Parry "sword."

"Crit immune"; it was used long before the idea of "caps" and should be brought back.

does anyone know if the morbidity is currently fixed or if it is fixed on the ptr? i want to spec into it again, but cannot take the chance of my fps dropping to 1 again with 2 or 3 drakes up

It's already been pointed out a few pages back - also it shows to be BoP which (we hope) will also be changed.

I just gathered the mats for the axe and am gonna attempt to xfer him to the PTR and see how I like it.
EDIT: he's copied over, when i get home from work 5pm central - ill do what tests i can)

I'll let you know if Morbidity is still causing the 1 fps bug as I was affected by it on live.


Oh, one more thing.
Has anyone noticed that their D&D is affecting other players with the 1fps bug if they have 3 points in Morbidity?

My GF plays a lock and she would drop to 1fps when standing in my D&D when i had her move about 30 yards away she was unaffected by it. This of course only during an aoe pull with 5+ mobs.

You're completely missing the point. Just because a stat spreads out your avoidance over multiple stat types doesn't necessarily mean it's better or that it makes better use of the item budget for you.

You already have a substantial amount of parry rating from your forceful deflection ability. That means you are NOT getting the same net returns from defense that a comparably geared paladin or warrior is.

Those numbers on wowwikki are pre-DR. You already have a significant amount of parry from forceful deflection, therefore the amount of parry you're actually going to get from defense (especially after 540) is substantially lower. In addition, after reading those 2 articles on tankspot, you should know that parry has much harsher DR than dodge. That means the net avoidance number is also substantially lower than what wowwikki says. At least one part of the avoidance from defense is suject to much higer DR than other parts (miss is an unknown, but parry is not). If all you care about is pure avoidance, the net return per incremental point is all that matters.

If you didn't do the math you really shouldn't be saying something is better or worse. Just because you "feel" something is better or worse doesn't make it so. You need to do what every warrior, druid, or paladin is doing and put all of your gear into a spreadsheet that calculates what your net avoidance is after DR with raid buffs.

Spreadsheets (or apps like Rawr) are indeed the optimal solution as they can give case by case reccomendations; however, the tankspot article/post probably took diminishing returns into account and proved that stacking pure defense is not truely as terrible as many here have hypothesized. The optimal way to do it, according to tankspot, is stack in a 2:1 or 3:2 (believe 3:2 was the best rule of thumb) defense:dodge ratio if you can afford to, demonstrating that defense is still very valuable post-crit immune.