I think it would.

You have to think of the situation where a damage tick would kill you in a raid environment.

I know my rip ticks raid buffed would come pretty close to using up my full damage shield in the same gear.

(Head calc, probably not as closely now I have gotten rid of 4t6 in my dps set.)

I've modified my simulator to include the new shield mechanic.

The simulator contain the complete combat table with right value for bosses, payy gibs, expertise and all.

The refering variable is equivalent-hp.

eq-hp = hp*(boss_dps/taken_dps)

in this way (it's a direct simulation, with a simulated 100ms latency) I automaticcally take into account the value of shields, expertise, etc.

The boss hits for 50k pre-mitigation with a 2s swing timer.

My raid buffed stats (with all raid buffs except inspiration, grace and priest shields):

Bear (crit% vs. a boss (-4.4% added)): 32.3664%
Expertise: 42
Hit: capped
Armor Penetration: 5.39126%
Haste (from equipment): 3.96462%
+weapon damage: 0
Defense: 420
Chance to be critical hit: 0%
Dodge (bear): 40.5008%
Miss: 10.2%
Total Avoidance (bear): 50.7008%
Total HP (bear): 47106


Sof = 66%, No shield
Shield value = 0
Bear armor: 36501
Physical Damage Reduction Bear: 73.2768%
hp equivalent with 0% avoidance, 0% Damage Reduction and without parry from the boss and bear-shield (bear): 346554

Sof = 45%, with shield

Shield value = 1722
Bear armor: 32537
Physical Damage Reduction Bear: 71.1225%
Shielded hits: 70.5887%
hp equivalent with 0% avoidance, 0% Damage Reduction and without parry from the boss and bear-shield (bear): 349069

EDIT: I've decided to find the balance vs. hard hitting boss because it's our speciality, actually if we balance around it, it can be for example very good for pvp, but we are not op there, so...

Sorry Guys, i may have picked up some bad information.

Didnt mean to mislead anyone.

I did a simulation of SD myself with the following values to simulate patchwerk main tanking.

Boss stuff:
Boss total avoidance to bear attacks = 5%
Boss swing speed = 1 s
Boss swing damage = 40000
No boss specials.

Defensive stats:
Bear armor reduction = 70%
Bear damage reduction after armor reduction = 12%
Bear avoidance = 50%

Offensive stats:
Attack power = 6000
Crit chance = 35%
Swing speed = 2.5 s
Special speed = 1.5 s

I got the following results:
Average hit damage after all mitigation = 9795
% of hits with SD shield = 51 %
% of damage mitigated by SD shield = 7.2%

I compared this to the amount blocked by one of our warriors vs patchwerk from a combat log.
% of damage mitigated by blocking = 13.5%

So I guess block is better on fights like patchwerk.

There is something wrong in your data probably. with 6k ap we have 1250 block wtih your uptime of 50%. A worrior usually have 20-25% block with 1300 block...
Probably you are taking into account shield block (the ability?) but you can't compare a cooldown with a base mechanic. they have shield block as we have barkskin.

I find it ironic that you're effectively trying to make armor and what is essentially a block mechanic commensurable when the entire impetus for the change is that they are not commensurable.

The whole point of the change is to erode the druid advantage on hard hitting bosses and shore up their relative weakness on trash.

Presumably this change will be viewed negatively by the majority of the druid community since more people care about their effectiveness at tanking bosses than they do tanking trash.

I would assume DoT's won't remove it based on the notes, but until it's tested I'll reserve judgment on this part.

That's true, you are correct. I took the total amount blocked from a combat log and didn't think about that fact. You also have to take into account that warriors have Critical block though. 30% chance on a successful block to block double amount. That makes it so that the 1300 value becaomes an average of 1690.

Ok. I just post the "new" stats value if we assume an hard hitting boss fight (50k pre mitigation, 2s swing), parry gibbs. The stats are the ones i posted in some post before this. I'm assuming 66% -> 45% for SoF.

Bear (crit% vs. a boss (-4.4% added)): 32.3664%
Expertise: 42
Hit: capped
Armor Penetration: 5.39126%
Haste (from equipment): 3.96462%
Total Avoidance (bear): 50.7008%
Total HP (bear): 47106
Shield value = 1722
Bear armor: 32537
Physical Damage Reduction Bear: 71.1225%
Shielded hits: 70.5887%

Stats Def. Offen. Total

AP 5 10 15

Feral AP 6 12 18

Agility 131 9 139

Strengh 13 23 36

Crit 8 14 22

Haste -4 18 14

Hit 1(0) 28(0) 29(0)

Expertise 63 58(29) 121(92)

Armor Pen 0 21 21

Defense 75 0 75

Dodge 98 0 98

Armor 44 0 44

Bonus Armor 6 0 6

Stamina 100 0 100

Basically the first collums are defensive value, the second offensive value and the third a "total" (70% def. 30% threat).

The defensive points are taken using Equivalent HP = HP * (Boss_Damage_Done)/(My_Damage_Taken)

Value in (-) are after the cap. Expertise "defensive" value should be used only vs. bosses with parry-gibbs enabled (for example patch and faerlina don't parry gibbs while Sarth and Maly do it).


The relative stats value doesn't change too much, at least not for me, looking at wow-head and putting those value inside I found the priority list I have already. The only small difference is that I usually value expertise a little more than the calculated one because the chance to be shooted in a small time window has a greater impact than the simple "average damage taken". So if 2 items are near i take the expertise one.

Not going to say much here, only that for most of the Math being thrown out their you are suggesting that Maul is always hitting 2 mobs, this is rarely the case in a good deal of Main Tanking or even OT during boss fights so I believe you are over stating the amount of possible attack power to Damage Mitigation.

From my view point though this might be an attempt by blizzard to buff our Magic mitigation while increasing our Tanking stat pool to include Strength and AP, I am a little more worried about the Armor nerf to survival of the fittest to support this new ability since Armor is a much more static mitigation over random crit procs.

I the other problem is that due to the Shield being proc based over use ability it means that we cannot calculate a "un-hitable" like Warriors and Pallys have, not to mention the 1 stack effect seems to make the the ability feel more random and less controlled especially in addition with with AP being a very unstable stat especially in raids it seems like it is a strange to promote for Defensive purposes.

Remember that a warrior/paladin's block % is additive with his avoidance. So for (random numbers) 50% avoidance and 25% block, he will actually block 50% of non-avoided attacks. Of course for paladins this is usually 100% of non-avoided attacks due to holy shield.