A member of Deathknight.info did some PTR testing with various amounts of defense/damage reduction with/without IBF.
According to the results it does appear to scale reasonably linearly with defense, working out at 0.143 - 0.15% to each additional point of defense.

470 defense - 30% damage reduction
Damage without IBF - 603 with IBF - 422.
20% + (70*0.143) = 30.01%

540 defense - 41% reduction
Damage without 603, with IBF - 355
20% + (140*0.15) = 41%

571 defense - 45.65% reduction
603 without, 327 with IBF
20% + (171*0.15) = 45.65%

596 defense - 49.4% reduction
603 without, 305 with IBF
20% + (196*0.15) = 49.4%

I'd imagine it is pretty safe to assume it's capped at 600 defense giving 50% reduction with IBF active.

oh wow I didn't even notice that his spec left out guild of gorefiend, silly me. As for your spec it's exactly what I came up with like 5 min ago, I just have my points into killing machine, merciless combat, and deathchill instead of icy reach, and up too imp icy talons. I know MC isn't really any good from privious discussions and I don't remember how KM turned out once we discovered it could proc off our rune strike

Well with that information it makes me wonder if we should worry about getting our def that high to recover the effectiveness of our IBF or still get other things like stam/avoid till we start collecting def again...

I agree.

Consider this: dodge rating is subject to diminishing returns so after a DR of 300+, the amount of DR per 1% dodge is about the same as defense rating per 1% avoidance.

There is one but.. And all the research I've done cannot confirm this, although the tooltip in the wow character shows it: Defense affected by diminishing returns.

(Please, is there anyone who can confirm or deny that defense is subject to diminishing returns and what is the relationship? This information will help settle the dispute of defense vs dodge after soft crit cap of defense 540. TY)

Well, you're wrong. Dodge is better than defense rating until dodge rating of 1000+ (dependent on gear, but I think mine is pretty normal). Read my post on the last page and use the spreadsheet. Defense is affected by diminishing returns.

Whether additional mitigation in IBF is worth giving up the extra avoidance is a different question.

Just curious if you guys think these will be worth using over some of the 203.x ilevel 213 weapons from Naxx. I know inevitable defeat is really nice, but the new weapons seem better than most of the other naxx weapons (assuming they aren't really BOP!)

I'm debating the same thing, while I would love to just get armageden (I'm a big sword fan : P) I realize to be you know the best tank I can be it's not the greatest weapon we could choose. Looking at the axe/sword vs the inevitable defeat, I would probabally still take the inevitable defeat...cause if all the numbers come down to ignoring more def rating and sucking up our IBF where it is what's the point of having either of those weapons?

(Emphasis mine)

This is a very interesting and key point to me. This effectively moves the DR curve for Defense up 25 points. Since they removed the talents for Pallys and Warriors that added Defense, unless I'm mistaken, with Stoneskin Gargoyle we will be the only class this is possible for. This also changes the comparison between SG and Swordshattering: 4% parry vs. 3% avoidance (parry/miss/dodge) and 2% Stam - with interesting ancillary effects on flexibility of gemming/enchanting *and* the potential shift of the DR curve for Defense. I know which way I'm leaning even though I don't have clear math yet. ;-)

The fundamental question this raises is whether or not that shift changes the proportional effectiveness of Defense to Dodge significantly. It really is a shame we haven't been able to identify the DR curve for miss so far; that would make it possible to actually determine an answer for us.

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd put my money on Miss having the same DR curve as Parry/Dodge/Block/etc.

That's nice. Except Parry and Dodge don't have the same DR curve, so that's not helpful.

Do they not have the same curve because the 0 point is at a different spot for each or do they literally have a different equation governing each of them? O.o

Clarification:

By 0 point I mean point at which dodge and parry sit after 540 defense (or, hell, whatever base 80 defense is... 400?) and after ability mods (so, for DKs, STR -> Parry; AGI -> Dodge).

Tankspot has the gory details, but the answer is "none of the above". They have the same formula and the same "0 point" (if I understand what you mean by that), but the curves are completely different because dodge and parry have different caps. Since the parry cap is much lower, it has a much more aggressive DR curve.

We don't know what the cap is for miss, so we don't know what the DR curve for miss looks like, so we don't know what the composite DR curve for defense looks like.

Edit: Hey, this forum has latex support. Groovy. So yeah, the formula is as follows

a is avoidance, k varies by class and is known, c varies by class and by avoidance type, and is not known for miss. Until c is found for miss, there's an issue. For more details, see the tankspot post.

So is dodge (for player; only mob can dodge from behind).

Parry is the weakest of the three, but not because it's frontal only; because it's a lot more expensive (i.e. you need more parry rating for 1% of avoidance than dodge rating or even defense rating).


When I first heard of DR on avoidance I though they would made it so we dont stack dodge over any other avoidance stats, and then making parry a bit less sucky; but it turned that with DR, parry is more sucky than ever.


About dodge vs def: ok you seem to be right that dodge is still better than def for pur mitigation. However, defense still have some advantage: it (will) boost IBF and it's the only way to increase miss, who is the only avoidance stat that is always up (while stunned, feared, from back etc).
Anyway, personnally, after crit immunity my first priority is neither dodge nor def, but hit, expertise and stam; for the moment, I am forced to gem and enchant for def to maintain my crit immunity but as soon as I get more def with the patch, I will happilly change them to try to cap my hit and expertise (for dodge at least) and then stam. The miss/parry/dodge on special is really annoying and a problem for me right now; it screw up my threat and sometime my avoidance too (when it prevent me to refresh blade barrier in time).

I am basically 2 pieces of gear away from being "complete" I'm sitting at roughly 28,500 hps unbuffed in frost presence with close to 25% dodge and 23% parry. I am unholy spec. Looking through wws logs 65% dmg misses but a tiny 3.3% is mitigated(naturally magic dmg mitigation is around 20%). When you compare this to the warrior 55% misses and 26% mitigated things dont look so good for us.

Compared to a pally tank we fair even worse. Now with content as it is not being hugely challenging its not so big a difference that I cant be healed or anything. Once they add some more challenging content however this will be a huge problem. I would argue its the pay off for the additional dps we do but to be honest the warrior and pally, for the most part, do as much or more damge (certainly the pally does more).

To be fair I have gained 2 pieces of gear since my last wws log but I don't think they will significantly alter things.

Concidering blizzard has been trying to push we are not avoidance tanks, where is our mitigation? The magic mitigation is not overly impressive compared to the other tank classes. I would like to see 10% mitigation to balance things up a bit. Anyone seeing similar values?

Actually, what you are focusing on is a bit misleading. You also have to take into account the size of the remaining average hits. Particularly after the next patch, I think you'll see that our base mitigation keeps us much more in line than you are thinking. Unfortunately, WWS doesn't count (really has no *way* to count), our "base" mitigation from Frost Presence & Armor. Combine that 10% extra avoidance with the smaller "non-Block" hits and we're probably pretty close. At least, I'm hoping so. We'll see.

One area where I'm absolutely thrashing our Warrior/Pally tanks is DPS when *not* tanking. In comparable gear, *without* switching to a DPS set, I'm easily 800-1000+ DPS higher than they are.

Yes I see my average dmg taken is about 2k less than the warriors. Interesting. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I also tested a few defense amounts and these were the results I got:

624 defense - 54.1% reduction
573 defense - 46.1% reduction
548 defense - 42.0% reduction
400 defense - 20.0% reduction (as expected from tooltip)

It seems the gains are not capped from what I could see.

... and because Warriors can't dual-wield to start, it makes me feel that Fury warriors should have comparable 2handers...

There are plenty of weapons out there good for DK tanks... Inevitable Defeat is clearly the best/most balanced, but remember that defense rating is still excellent, remember that the tanking weapons have more stamina, remember that using a weapon with defensive stats frees you up even more to socket for hit/expertise if you need it...

So no, the Titansteel Defender is probably the best ilvl200 weapon for a DK tank... if you have plenty of gold, make both the Destroyer and the Defender... but remember that the Destroyer can be replaced very easily in Naxx10/25, while you'll want to keep the Defender around for quite a while (even once you have a "better" weapon).

I get what your saying, but doesn't that make us flip-flop? As discussed previously we are like paladins, our gear is our def not our weapons.

In a fight where threat is a non issue and the boss is using powerful melee attacks, titansteel defender is probably the best weapon currently in game(well it's not actually ingame yet), 540def or not. It adds more avoidance than pretty much any other 2H. So as Raedix said, it'll be useful for a long time. In comparison, the Destroyer is only useful until you find a ilvl213 weap from naxx/malygos. Once it's done, you don't really need it anymore, unless you're like me and keep the destroyer for fallen crusader runeforge and have a 4%parry runeforge on your main weap. I'll definitely add a Defender to my collection, it's like trinkets really, you switch them depending on the fight.

Which was what Blizzard originally intended (and might be the case when T7 has passed us by), but the difficulties that players have had in getting Defense-capped has made Blizzard realize that at least at this gear level, DKs need more options.

Only time will tell if they end up making updated versions of the Titansteel tank weapons come 3.1 and so on...

edit: Just want to emphasize Pyros' reply... I have always been a proponent of gearing as a tank in a manner that one gets all essential stats from gear alone, and then swapping trinkets and weapons as a specific fight suggests... the new options that Blizzard is giving us will really emphasize this point.

but switching weapons around like that would mean you would be forced to leave w/e gems you have in your gear correct? You can't have a def weapon and change your gear to accommodate 540 and then switch to a different weapon and go oh noes I just got crit O_o

edit: and is getting uncrittable really that hard for people? I've had np what so ever. Yeah some of the gear in naxx is like 30 less def rating and more stats, but I've easily just floated def gems in and out to stay at or above 540

Perhaps you have the Seal of Pantheon or Repelling charge, which help a lot