The tootip says X parry rating adds X.XX% before diminishing returns, but the final value displayed is after diminishing returns. See that, for example, your tooltip may say you have 1730 dodge rating which is adding 10% dodge before diminishing return, but your dodge percentage will say, (not exact number) 13.50%, instead of (5+10=15%). That 13.50% is after diminishing returns.

1) The formulae for all dps abilities can be found on wowhead.com. These might be off a bit here and there but they're mostly up to date.
2) No. Crit is the first thing to be pushed off the hit table so the point at which you are uncrittable is when miss+dodge+block+parry chance > 100%.
3) At current your max threat rotation is pretty much exactly the same as your max dps rotation as all Warrior abilities have the same dmg-to-threat conversion rate. Basically threat = 6*dmg so max threat = max dps. The only significant difference would be to drop Thunderclap (in single target situations), Shield Block and Demoralizing Shout as these are the only abilities that you use purely to increase your survival rate.

Heavy Repercussions talent makes SB a dps gain, especially with t11/t12 2pc bonus. It wont be tied together with t13 gear, but that talent alone will still make SB worth using for damage increase (if you can afford not timing it for survival purposes).

Also, depending on how far you are from the block cap, the increased rage generation from Shield Specialization might make Shield Block worth it even without Heavy Repercussions.

Hi, I've taken a look (/thank Probaton), and crafted my formula where info is missing and,

(can't figure out how to put tables in)



My head hurts from doing excel (new to this level of theorycrafting) so for legend and background information

I use an obsidium cleaver, and run a WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie talent set up

Legend:
Base - base damage (rough estimate)
AP mod - spell's ap coefficient
MWS - mainhand weapon speed
MWD - mainhand weapon dps
mods - glyphs, talents, and spell's own coefficients

beside the vengeance/no vengeance column
rend: how much each tick deals
deep wounds: how much each tick deals
dev: the value for dev without vengeance assumes also no sunder stacks are up while the value for dev with vengeance assumes three sunders are up

TC rend - tc rend is when one thunderclap while rend is up, as thunder clap adds a tick of rend to it

So, in terms of dps rotation
These include total damage done by dots
(damage is based on my set, which is pretty much 4p t12 and all 378 except chest, primarily gem stam, double stam trinkets)

At zero vengeance the rotation is this
Shield Slam 7.2k
Rev 7.1k
Heroic Throw 5.8k
Conc Blow 5.7k
Shockwave 5.7k
Victory Rush 5.1k
Rend 5k
Devastate 4.9k
Heroic Strike 4.6k
Heroic Leap 3.8k
TC rend 2.9k
Thunder Clap 2.1 k
Deep Wounds 1.3k
Intercept 0.9k

However at max vengeance
Shield Slam 16.9
Conc Blow 16.8
Shockwave 16.8
Heroic Throw 16.8
Victory Rush 15
Rev 14.8
Heroic Strike 13.4
Devastate 12.6
Heroic Leap 11.2
Rend 9.3
TC rend 7.1
Thunder Clap 5.5
Intercept 2.6
Deep Wounds 2.6

But! Damage potential due to SnB, talents (at max vengeance)
Shield Slam
Heroic Strike
Victory Rush
Devastate
Concussion Blow
Shockwave
Heroic Throw
Rev
Heroic Leap
Rend
TC rend
Thunder Clap
Intercept
Deep Wounds


These numbers are very rough and do not take into account shield block, snb proc.

when I have more time maybe I'll do a ap scale graph to see at when does which ability becomes better.

Extra information (that I found out and haven't seen it in forums)
If rend is refreshed by
rend - the rend that is rolling is based on the power of the latest applied rend
tclap - the rend that is rolling is based on the most powerful rend rolling

Berserker Rage does not provide more rage during a block, dodge, parry or miss. Only a full hit.

More questions:

1) When I dev I apply sunder, but does my dev account for the sunder that it applies for the bonus damage? Or does it only count sunders prior to the dev application?

*edited to include one more extra information

Mayhaps you will want to look into: The Cataclystic Protection Warrior Spreadsheet

It looks like is more or less the same you want to do...If you still want to do your own version, you may use it to get some info on formulas, or compare results.

What do you think, with the upcoming patch and new gear, will it be more beneficial to try get mastery high enough that you have 100% crit block chance with shield block and hold the line up, or stack parry and dodge while keeping passive 102.4% combat table coverage?

Essentially this.

Overall, it depends on what your healers are comfortable with. If you find yourself having trouble with burst damage, then stamina will help. If that's not an issue, then get more avoidance.

But like Runtime said, stamina is generally a better choice once you're block capped, because physical damage is trivial at that point anyways, so the only thing that will really threaten your survival is unavoidable damage. Heroic Ragnaros is a great example of this... the fight is basically a series of nasty damage spikes, and stamina will do a lot more for you than avoidance (once you're block capped).

If your EH is high enough (depending on how hard future bosses will hit) so you don't need more stamina I won't recommend to stack pure avoidance but to stack more mastery. As a tank, your job is to survive, and for this you want either to reduce the number of potentially deadly scenarios or to make these less dangerous. Stamina works fine with this, but pure avoidance doesn't really reduce those situations (the effect is really minor) nor does it make them less dangerous.
If you are unhittable the biggest danger comes from multiple noncritical blocks in a row (and from high spike unavoidable damage, but you can't avoid this with pure avoidance too), so reducing the chance to block noncritical by stacking mastery isn't that bad as you may think. Also, it is possible to reach a point where you cannot block noncritical anymore during shield block.

I seriously doubt that they would make a boss hit so hard that you will have trouble with melee spike damage as this would make it near impossible for any other tank besides a warrior to tank it. That boss would have to hit for 120k+ every melee hit which would he very close to a wrath model in tank healing which blizzard is trying to avoid. In reality the only way melee damage would be a factor in any fight is if we were to have another dual wielding boss like algalon and on those fights reducing the damage you take is the main priority which is best done by avoidance past the block cap.

I want to make this perfectly clear. I fully recommend stacking stam after the block cap.

As for why I recommended stacking avoidance if you didn't want to stack stam, Unless there is a healer issue, you will not die from spike melee damage if you are block capped. So the best way to help your healers after that point is to reduce the damage you take to help their mana pools. This is best done by stacking avoidance as avoidance reduces more damage than mastery past the block cap at almost all dr levels. One thing to keep in mind is that mastery loses more than half of its value when you hit the block cap and continues to get worse as your gear naturally improves. This is for the same reason for why mastery is so good up to the cap. When you aren't block capped, mastery gets better the more you have, because as you gain more block you are naturally going to critical block more often even it you didn't receive more critical block chance. Then you gain more crit block as well making it alot of damage reduction. The same thing happens in reverse as your gear improves after the block cap. Naturally you will have more avoidance next tier and your block chance will will decrease as it gets pushed off the combat table. So you will start crit blocking less often just because you will be blocking less often. Due to this, I dont see mastery really helping that much past the 102.4% CTC.