Long story short, I would agree. As much as I love how our CB works, I've been reworking my avoidance-stam gems into mastery-stam gems to squeeze a little bit more out for my CTC and have room to dump some pure stam gems in my blue sockets. That being said, I also believe that tanking should not be looked at as an independent entity. The mentality of, "I'm geared and itemized to perfection, anything after that is your fault" is not a healthy one. I'd probably see where your healers stand and see how comfortable they are with managing a larger Health pool.

Edit: When I get my hands on SSV, I'll probably dip myself under the cap unbuffed and put in a little more stam just because of the mastery proc.

No. Crit block cap is unreachable.

Bad info, please delete.

You get 5% base block chance and 15% block chance from Sentinel. Both do not apply to critical block.

"Thus: Only shield block value gained by shield block will be converted to critical block. (This + Hold the line + Critical block from mastery = Final chance to critical block)

So I have to revise my post above. Stacking mastery above 102.4% making it loose half its value because the normal chance to block gets cropped. "

So what I am hearing is the shield block at and above CTC only improves the critical block chance and does so by 25%. I would say that past CTC, mastery gives: More critical blocks resulting in higher average blocks, both with and without shield block up.

I think the point has been made by another here, about the value of critical block versus a normal block. The normal block makes a hit for 10, a hit for 7. A critical block makes a hit for 7, a hit for 4.

I interpret this situation as where I value the 7 to 4 result, more than the 10 to 7 result. While Dragon Soul bosses may not require such large blocks, It seems to me, still a powerful way to reduce physical damage taken.

That being said, is there an CTC value that you can maximize CB as well as maintain a large enough health pool without sacrificing too much avoidance?

"10 to 7" is an EH buffer, pure and simple. "7 to 4" is nothing like it and it wont be until we reach 50 mastery to push normal blocks off the table.

As a sidenote, jewelcrafting is not a raiding profession this tier. With epic gems, JCs get much less benefit out of chimera's eyes than they used to. What was 153 stam/81 str has become 78 stam/51 str. JCs will likely get returned to previous levels with mists, but are currently subpar.

JC can be viable if you need the extra mastery to reach the block cap (since JC, alchemy and Blacksmithing are the only professions that can provide mastery instead of stamina), although that will be increasingly trivial in DS gear.

Am I right to think that you are saying that when one reaches CTC, the worst case scenario is now, normal block, normal block, normal block repeating until dead? This does convert to a certain amount of guaranteed effective health.

I guess we may be looking for the value of more mastery after CTC for physical damage. Increased critical blocks versus increased dodges and parries. Another factor to consider is, the smoothing effect of blocking. And there is minimum EH (block, block, block, die) and average EH. Mastery past CTC increases average EH but not minimum EH.

CTC brings us to a certain minimum amount of EH, and is a threshold. We can stack stamina after that, and raise our minimum EH for sure, all the time, but that doesn't reduce damage taken by much.

How much mastery rating past CTC gives 1% damage reduction from base damage? Assuming we use the shield block gem, turning 0.69 hits into 0.38 hits gives 45% DR on that hit, but that says nothing about how much rating gives an overall 1% DR. We also need to make sure we don't talk about relative DR here, because it can easily get confusing.


To make easier math, let's assume a tank with 0% dodge/parry.

Pre-CTC, mastery gives block such that 1% block gave 0.3% DR, so 3.33% block gives 1% DR. Post-CTC, mastery gives crit block such that 1% crit block gives 0.6% DR (0.43% relative DR), so 1.66% crit block gives 1% DR (0.71% relative DR). It takes 2.33% crit block (1.4% DR) for 1% relative DR.

179.28 mastery rating gives 1 mastery, and each point of mastery gives 1.5% crit block chance (in addition to 1.5% block). So to compare mastery to dodge, we just do the math.

Pre-CTC, mastery gives 1% DR at 398.4 mastery rating (ignoring crit block effect). Post-CTC, mastery gives 1% DR at 199.2 mastery rating (1% relative DR at 278.88 mastery rating).


Before diminishing returns, dodge is 11% better than mastery. With diminishing returns, the two are nearly equal, though mastery gets better the more avoidance you have. Due to Hold the Line, parry is better than dodge, though it grants 10% crit block making a comparison more difficult.