First part is really personal perference - set bonuses don't have to be passive things in order to be useful. I can't really see what other bonuses would outweigh 6 additional seconds on Shield Wall, unless you're trying to compare set bonuses in a vacuum. You're trading small stat gains for something potentially crucial. In my experience on heroic progression, I could definitely see how that bonus would be pretty useful.

This almost goes without saying, but yes the bonuses are similar to t7 (bad) because we need a place to progress. I always expect iffy itemization and poor set bonuses on the first tier or so. We can't all have set bonuses as amazing as DK dps 4pc t9 (pre-nerf) from the first tier.

I haven't used shield wall as a 'panic button' since they released the glyph in wrath to decrease the CD/dmg reduction. I use it as a planned flat damage reduction when I know I'm going to get hit hard, or I know the raid is going to get hit hard and the healers (possibly moving) will have a rough time keeping everyone (including me) up.

The fact that with this 4 piece I'll be able to roll SB -> SW ---> SB with minimal spacing makes this bonus very appealing to me, especially for the harder hitting phases of hardmode fights.

Not sure if this could be done although I would think it could but it would be a complex calculation.

Im thinking if there is a way to derive a formula that can calculate if in your current gear the DR on parry+chance to proc HTL and cause a critical block is less valuable then dodge.

I would assume at some point of stacking parry the DR on parry would be so great that dodge would be a better stat. If something like this can be turned into a formula it be amazing for min maxing. That's assuming that it's even possible to get the DR high enough in current gear.

Is Critical Block actually added on top of block? I thought it was just a chance of a block to be critical?

i.e. 50% block and 25% critical block = 50 hits out of a 100 are blocked where 25% out of 50 are critically blocked.

Or is this assumption wrong?

Your assumption is correct and Theramis's is wrong. The specific issue of balancing parry and dodge was already calculated in this very thread ([Cataclysm] Protection Warrior) and the conclusion was that you more or less want to balance them (there is an optimal ratio where parry is slightly higher than dodge)

Can you please explain to me where I am wrong, and perhaps also spell my name correctly? I never said anything about block chance and crit chance being additive. I'm sorry if my spreadsheet is too confusing for you.

I think that the Hold the Line up time calculated in the quoted post's link is a bit high and wrong. I would love to be told where my calculation is incorrect and not just simply "someone else typed something first that agrees with my preconceived notions, end of story."

If you look at my link, no where do I say that block and crit block are additive. The way I have it displayed looks that way for the calculations. Block chance does not simply mean chance to block and neither does crit block chance. The formula would look more like (using Xav's numbers as Outfitter apparently left my dps engi helm on and not my tanking engi helm)

Raid Boss Swing = 100.00%
- miss chance = 4.40%
- parry = 14.51%
- dodge = 9.57%
= 28.48% chance the mob's attack will be fully avoided.

Xav stacks mastery and has a 57.51% chance to block a lvl 88 raid boss, 37.66% of those blocks will be crits. So, to calculate from the boss's perspective, 28.48% of his swings will not land, 35.85% will be blocked and hit for 70% (or 69% with eternal meta), 21.66% will land for 40% (or 38% with eternal) and the last 14.01% will be full 100% hits.

BUT if Xav uses shield block, his block chance goes up 25%. Thus, for that 10 seconds, the boss will see 28.48% of his swings will not land, 31.39% will be blocked and hit for 70% (or 69% with eternal meta), 40.14% will land for 40% (or 38% with eternal) and the none will be full 100% hits.

Stacking mastery scales things very oddly (and very well for tanks). The extra 10% crit block may not sound like much (only 1 in 10 blocked attacks being affected) but it scales so well, especially with shield block up.

Thus, a 5% extended uptime compared to a .05% chance to avoid a block is much closer than you think. If you disagree, please point out the errors in my spreadsheet and when fixed we can prove this. Right now, I recommend that the more mastery you have, the more diminishing returns from parry you should suffer over reforging to dodge.

This is what I'm using in my spreadsheet as an estimate of Hold the Line uptime:

1-(1-p)^n

p is your parry chance, and n is the number of times you expect to be attacked in a 10 second period. Basically, this formula tells you how probable it is when the enemy swings at you that you parried a swing in the last 10 seconds.

It's inaccurate if you haven't taken that many swings in the last 10 seconds (so if the boss constantly stops swinging to cast a spell or because he's getting stunned or some other mechanic) but it's a pretty good model.

Using this, the advantage to stacking parry over dodge is pretty minor. I used n=4. I have 1546 dodge rating and 1652 parry rating, and my numbers indicate that adding to parry gives slightly more mitigation than adding to dodge, but again the actual n may be lower or higher depending on how many attacks you are actually receiving.

I'll upload the spreadsheet later tonight after some tweaks so that others can figure out their optimal stats.


I've also been doing some calculations on the benefit for different stats, and I've found that the 160 armor enchant for shields is nearly as good as the 40 block rating enchant for shield, but it has the added benefit of being less random (armor mitigation is completely consistent) and it also continues to be in effect when you are unable to block (due to being stunned, for instance, or because of an unblockable phyical AoE type attack). For those reason, I kind of lean towards the armor enchant. Thoughts?

Has anyone other than me noticed 50 parry rating disappearing from their character sheets at times? I was just standing around org taking off and putting on gear to get a look at parry and dodge numbers and I noticed sometimes my parry was dropping by 50 more rating than it should, any ideas?

Are you accounting for the strength -> parry rating conversion (1 rating per 4 strength)?

The other thing I'd make sure to check is that the parry isn't from reforging an item. At least as of two days ago there was still an issue where by just comparing an item by holding shift during mouse-over didn't correctly display stat changes when the item(s) had been reforged.
I'd also double-check your strength like the guy above me said and make sure it's staying the same.

The other thing I wanted to throw up here was a spreadsheet I made a couple days ago. I saw a link on here for one by tankspot and didn't like it because of the way they tried to calculate total avoidance.
They added dodge chance, parry chance, and boss miss chance together. This doesn't seem like it would be an accurate way to calculate it though because you have separate rolls for each type of mitigation.
Anyway, I was just wanting to throw it up here and see what you guys thought. I haven't gotten around to adding in armor, but the way I calculated Hold The Line uptime is similar to what I've seen thrown around in this thread.
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I'll be checking back here to see if I made any mistakes. Thanks for the feedback.