Proudmoore is definitely right in the technical aspect. To get how I came up with the 60% value, I used my current gear.

I'm currently at 68% avoidance raid buffed. Let's say I got enough dodge rating to get up to 69% avoidance. This is a 3.125% decrease in avoidable damage. After Chill of the Throne, that same amount of rating takes me from 48% to 49%, which is a 1.923% reduction in avoidable damage. 1.923 / 3.125 = 61.5%.

So, it's mitigating roughly 61.5% as much damage as it used to be.

Now, as Theckhd pointed out, the value of avoidance in regards to reducing the likehood of spike streaks has gone up relative to where it was. So it isn't all loss. But still, comparing the new dodge to expertise, expertise is still going to be better at reducing spike intake while also mitigating more total damage overall. (Assuming the boss is parry-haste enable.)





On a totally different note, I finally picked up Burnished Quel'Serrar tonight, enchanted it and took it out for a test drive. Looking at the logs for the night, I averged 65.7% uptime on it's buff on bosses over the night (not counting the skewed fights), which is pretty damn good I'd say. Looking at the logs:
Koralon - 75.5%
Emalon - 76.6%
Archavon - 46.6% (but was groped, so artificially low)
Razorscale - 44.3% (with large amounts of not-hitting-things time in p1)
Ignis - 58.4%
XT - 54.2%
Kologarn - 67.1%
Hodir - 57.1% (wasn't actually tanking, just lolprotdps since it was just a casual clear and we wanted to test an initiate tank and already had too many healers for me to go holy)
Thorim - 71%

(Log got bugged out after that -- Freya and Mimiron seem to include their trash as well, and didn't tank Vezax)

Much higher numbers than I expected TBH. I think I'll keep this puppy in the bag and pull it out for fights that aren't HP or threat sensitive.

This might be a bit late, but looking at the 4pc bonus and the discussion about trying to make up the loss of 20% dodge in pure block brought me a question. Gearing to make up the 20% gap with block may be a bit drastic, but would gearing to make up 8-9% block be worth it? Since our 4pc mini-cooldown would then become a cooldown that would bring us to unhittable for a short time?

While I don't think it's viable to gear for the lost 20% avoidance, gearing for that 8% might be a good difference when you use the DP cooldown.

Does it bother anyone else that our 4pc takes a global to activate but the Death Knight, Druid, and Warrior equivalents do not? It's bad enough that they gain a guaranteed cooldown in the situations where you know a big hit is coming that you need to mitigate when we don't, but the global thing is just adding insult to injury.

That issue is part of the downsides to being a hybrid. They picked abilities that already had a 1 minute cooldown, and Divine Plea is the only 1 minute Pally cooldown (Hammer is 1 min base, but Prot has it at at 40 seconds or less) and it needed to cause a GCD for balance.

If they indeed chose Divine Plea because of its already built in 1 minute cool-down and GCD trigger; I almost would have rather seen them tag this to our Bubble Wall (divine protection) with a slight boost to the dodge value or dodge length to make up for the increased cool-down. Rather than plugging it onto divine plea. With thoughts of popping GCD for massive incoming amounts of damage I dislike the idea of having to pop one (Divine plea with 4pc tier bonus), and then having to wait for a GCD before i can pop Divine Protection to increase my damage mitigation. It seems like the developers had tunnel vision choosing only abilities with a 1 minute cool-down, when one of the major tanking classes' 1 minute cool-down ability has nothing to do with tanking other than the initial activation before a fight commences.

Hum? Divine Protection is off the GCD; you could pop it at any time, including the same instant you pop the tier bonus if you have a reason to stack cooldowns.

Maybe Divine Plea isn't a good choice, but they need a 1 minute cooldown (that cannot get shorter) ability to put the bonus on. Plea is the only choice.

They aren't going to add a new ability that just magically comes when you get a set bonus.

Hypothetically, they could just make it an 'on use' effect of the chest or helmet (like the Horseman's Helm for example). It's certainly possible to code such a thing that can be thrown on a toolbar/hotkeyed. Not saying there's any incentive for them to, but it is possible to basically add an ability that comes with a set bonus, just as an item effect instead of a spellbook ability.

But then it becomes an item bonus instead of a 4pc set bonus. Fitting in a description that says that the on-use effect on item X only functions when you have 4/5 T10 is not, I fear, any more of a convinient solution. Probably more effeort from a coding perspective, although that is purely guesswork on my part.

With all this bonus armor gear (chest, gloves, legs are already known and easily available; more might show up later) you can probably safely ignore 4t10 anyway, at least until 25 heroic gear.

Also, Prot Pally has the worst 4 piece bonus (dodge instead of less damage taken). Serious tanks will want those crafted pieces for a long while.

Ok, I have a Warrior Tank as well, and for some reason from what I have read they don't require as much hit rating (164) because of the function of expertise also providing a percentage of hit as well.

Does this also work for Pally Tanks too? Or am I missing something?

Edit: Ok, I read into this a bit more from the above information I first posted

First off the melee hit apparently is 8% (not 9%) as posted earlier in this "guide", so that would make the base amount of hit rating required to reach 8% of 263 hit rating. Now add a draenei to the mix, and this become 7% or 230 hit rating. Subtract another 3% for FF or Misery and you wind up with 4% or 131.16 (132 rounding up)

Now that 164 rating I mentioned earlier would be required if you did not have a draenei present, but did have FF/Misery

Now the burning question... obviously both warriors and paladins have glyphs which allow them to gain an additional 8% hit for their taunts.... so my question is, should I be aiming for the 132 hit rating (assuming you raid with a Boomkin or Shadowpriest) or just bite the bullet and aim for 230 hit rating (since every group I raid with alliance side has a draenei present) to assure taunt will never miss.

Any input would be greatly appreciated....

Warrior taunt is a physical attack, so it uses physical stats... you would need 263/230 hit rating to cap it (without the glyph) and FF/Misery has nothing to do with it.

Paladin taunts are spells and use spell mechanics, so given full buffs and no glyph, you would need 342 hit rating to cap it. Given that we have two taunts and a glyph we can swap in if necessary, I hardly see this as helpful in any real situation (the glyph, incidentally, drops the hit needed by 208).

IFF and Misery specifically state that they only apply to spells (Misery goes further and states harmful spells). If, therefore, you take the case of Taunt being a melee attack, it doesn't benefit from either.

I was under the impression that all Taunt mechanics had always been spells (i.e. 17% miss chance against bosses), regardless of class.

Taunt does have a 17% miss rate, but I what the issue is that since Taunt is melee attack it uses melee hit. However, it isn't much of an issue since all tanks have at least two taunts.

Hit, imo, is not a required stat, therefor you dont need to aim for any hit rating, higher than what your basic gear gives you.
If you are going to go for hit though, i would go for the lower hit rating in order to achieve higher, more important stats.

EDIT: Totally wrong, sorry!

Is there a source for this statement? Read: has there been statistical data collected, showing that taunt miss is capped at 8%? It does in no way reflect my own (anecdotal) experiences of consecutive taunt misses at 5-6% hit (at Algalon e.g.)

Actually, taunt scales with spell hit. In BC they added melee hit to also increase it, but that is when the two stats were separate. Now that they are merged, it scales with respect to the spell hit conversion (see below for source). I made sure to barely spell hit cap, leaving my melee hit cap as far below 17% as I could (after making sure the cap was indeed 17%), and taunted for a long while (till I was satisfied that I had a decent statistical sample). No misses with a 13.66% melee hit (17.08% spell hit) after 283 attempts, which has about a 6.681/100000 chance of happening if taunt was increased by the melee hit conversion. With 283 attempts there should be a 99.993% chance of seeing at least one miss, but there wasn't one.

Actually, taunt is capped at 17% for all classes. Warriors tested it back in TBC, I tested it in WotLK and TBC and have since had some Tankspot friends verify the findings as well. It is 17%. Take a look at the thread I posted below. If taunt was capped at 8%, I wouldn't have gotten a taunt miss with 9.45% melee hit (11.81 spell hit).

Here is some testing of taunt:
Taunt Mechanics Guide/Discussion - TankSpot

Thanks for that thread! My mistake on assuming "physical school" - the school listed for warrior/druid abilities in wowhead - meant physical abilities.

On the topic of Taunt, if it really does function like a spell using the spell mechanics, then while an 83 mob would have a 17% chance to resist, wouldn't a level 82 mob have a 6% chance to resist? That's how spell resists work; does taunt work like that too?

I haven't specifically tested 6% on an 82 mob, but I see no reason why it would be different. They would have to have coded a specific set of value just for one type of ability. Still worth testing at some point though I guess.

As a side note, you could tell from classic that taunt was a spell. I remember in Stockades getting silenced out of my warrior's and druid's taunt.