Kudagaxehand's 100% Avoidance/Block Post

[Ciderhelm]

This has been a bit of a legendary post on the Warrior forums. Reposting it here, with all credit to Kudagaxehand. Enjoy!


Was just playing around on Wowhead and came up with a gear set that gives passive 100% (actually it was closer to 107%) miss+dodge+parry+block, essentially making you immune to crits and crushings at all times, leaving your only source of incoming damage as blocked attacks and magic damage.

Now it is mostly cutting edge gear, barring a few blues with high avoidance and block rating, and requires 12 of the +10 (epic crafted)defense gems, but has no enchants nor weapon (only shield) taken into consideration either, so there is a bit of leeway to play with here and there. I just picked the item for the slot that gave the most avoidance+block, ignoring all other considerations, so some modification to the list may be desireable to boost other stats.

I think all of the gear is available to both factions and both shattrath factions (aldor/scryer) but I didn't really look. If not, I'm sure there are pieces that could be substituted.

The gear set assumes the following:
-The warrior in question has max 350/350 base defense skill.
-The Warrior class has a base 5% miss, 5% parry and 5% block and a 0% base chance to dodge, for 15% base avoidance+block.
-The warrior, being a responsible tank, maximises the avoidance available to his build and specs 5/5 deflection, 5/5 shield specialisation and 5/5 avoidance for an additonal 10% avoidance and 20 defense skill. 20*.04 for each of miss, dodge, parry and block gives another 3.2% avoidance +block for a total of 28.2% before gear.
-The agility to dodge ratio is approximately 27.5 to 1% dodge, as determined by dividing my agility by my dodge%. Agility contributes very little to the gear set however(93 agility total), so if this value is slightly off, it won't have much overall effect.

The gear required is as follows:
Phoenix Wing Cloak http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29925
Onslaught Chestguard http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30976
Boots of the Resilient http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32267
Onslaught Handguards http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30970
Onslaught Greathelm http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30974
Destroyer Legguards http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30116
Onslaught Shoulderguards http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30980
Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28566
Wristguards of Determination http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32515
Shield of the Wayward Footman http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31200
Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30028
Andormu's Tear http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29323
Shadowmoon Insignia http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32501
Figurine of the Colossus http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27529
Thick Lionseye X12 http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32208

The gear gives a total of:
-463 (343+120 for the gems) defense rating (463/2.4 *0.04 * 4 = 30.87% avoidance +block)
-131 dodge rating (131/18.9 = 6.93% avoidance)
-59 parry rating (59/22.4 = 2.63% avoidance)
-276 block rating (276/7.9 = 34.94% block)
-93 agility for approximately 3% more dodge (actually more if my value is correct , wich I suspect it isn't as it seems to vary from armory page to armory page, warrior to warrior)
-+ our 28.2% base+talents value from above

This is a total of 106.57% avoidance with no enchants and no weapon, and it still maintains the (now unnecessary with 100% avoidance) defense skill 490 minimum (actually well exceeds with ~563 defense skill).

As mentioned before there is plenty of leeway for minor alterations.
Switching the epic +10 defense rating gems for the blue +8 defense rating variety , a change of 24 defense rating, drops the total down to 104.97% avoidance +block for example. Against a 73 boss mob with standard mob stats for the level, you require approximately 102.4% total avoidance+block (due to the slight reduction in your avoidance and block chances applied by the mobs higher level), leaving another 2% leeway to play with.

So a couple months from now I imagine we'll be seeing raid tanks who don't even have shield block on their bars any more.

If i made a mistake somewhere, feel free to point it out.

[Ciderhelm]

I may have had it confused with an earlier post, but either way, this is really good. And if ain't legendary yet, it will be soon! :)

[TheZ]

If you notice with tank points you can mouse over your shield block value and it will list your crushing % vs a boss level mob. Recently in the gear that I have 5/5 t4, 1/5 t5, epic plan crafted boots and random block+dodge gear I'm able to reduce my crushing chance to 9.8% unbuffed. I assume that if i was fully raid buffed with a shaman in my group for strength and agility and mongoose up that you would have less than a 1% chance to be crushed w/o having to use shield block. For a few fights in SSC this could be good like Morogrim and how he hits so fast and crushings is almost a norm from him.

But it's still intresting that with mostly gear just from T4 instances and with some from the T5 instances and with blues you can come close to being uncrushable without shield block.

[Crimsonstorm]

This tank would never get crushed....and would die to encounters that have high burst damage (without crushes), that would be survivable be a tank with the same level of gear that instead emphasized armor and stamina, and hit shield block every 5 seconds.

[Mozman]

nice stuff Kuda & /hola ;)

[Nicki]

its a nice idea, the problem is that it sacrifices sooo much stats to achieve a 'good goal' but sacrifices what id think is too much for passive crush immunity when the warrior could have just upped dodge and kept shield block up almost indefinately..as well as having superior stamina and armor..the trade off isn't worth it, the idea is great though..tanks who have no need for shield block :rolleyes: Blizzard did say they are looking into crushing mechanics a while ago..my fear is that if they remove the mechanic they make druids the obvious choice for tanks and make paladins one strength completely useless. If they change them it could be interesting indeed though...

[Fame]

Well the adventage of being crush immune is the fact that there is lag issues and sometimes you wont have shield block active when the 3rd swing comes around (or especialy if the mob gets a string of parries on you and ends up swinging 3-5 times in a matter of a 5 sec duration.)
aquiring 102.4 is much easier (and far less deadly) then majority of you might realize. hunters can easily keep scorpid sting up on the mob adding an extra 5% miss, while a druid should be able to put up insect swarm in most scenarios. thats an overall 8% avoidance. using an agi pot bring another 2%'ish with kings into the mix (i dont remmeber the last time i used anything other then agi and gift of arthas on a boss)
Anyone who is facing boss' who are threatning enough to instagib with a crush, should have access to partial t5, and thus should be able to achieve the uncrushable status with just bairly swiching up a piece or two of their gear.
my boss setup has 100.42 avoidance/block at the moment without any buffs (motw + kings puts me at uncrushable) it is important to note however that i was not atempting to get to an uncrushable state but simply picking up the best pieces that i could for those slots keeping in mind midigation/threat.
my armory (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alleria&n=Firstblood)

[Concordia]

That's interesting. I wonder if it was Blizzard's intention to make Warriors passively crush immune by the end of T6 content.

Anyway, take a look at this Armoury: The Armory (http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodscalp&n=Adamka)

It seems he logged out in DPS gear, but this Warrior is passively crush immune with raid buffs, and only has two pieces of T5 gear (Shoulders and Leggings). However, his unbuffed Health is ~12,500 -- a far cry from what most Warriors at that level of progression have. I don't think the sacrifice to reach immunity is worth it. Instead, I would follow the same approach as Fame/Firstblood and let it come naturally.

Also, several bosses in BT/Hyjal are unable to perform Crushing Blows but hit very hard with their Normal attacks. I'm talking specifically about Mother Shahraz, Archimonde, and Azgalor. Bosses like these work against any tank actively working towards passive crush immunity.

[Trondheim]

The initial gear list forgot a neck.

The best crush immunity neck is Darkener's Grasp, from Kael, which is almost 5% avoidance by itself.

I think the main problem with this much avoidance would be a lack of threat due to rage starvation.