Block Value and Rating vs Avoidence?

[Hildale]

Hi there everyone at Tankspot.com!

This is my first post so I might aswell make a greetings of it aswell.
Greetings!

It have struck my mind that pure block value and rating could be a very nice way to tank bosses rather than push avoidence to the max.
Why you might ask?
Well say for example that you maintain atleast 20% on both parry and dodge and atleast 28.000 hp unbuffed, and instead of trying to go higher for the complete avoidence starting to max out your shieldblock value and rating.

With the correct glyphs and buffs and proccs you could actually get huge amounts of block.
We all know that avoidence is kind of a roll the dice if you are not capped wich I havent found anyone to be yet. as well with the block rating but I do feel that blockrating is much more easier to raise well above 35%

Here comes the numbers.
We start off with a basevalue on shieldblock with 2500 or maybe even 3000.
Go with the Shield Mastery talent and your up to 4000 blockvalue
Add an additional 20% from the Shield Slam glyph and it will become as much as 4800. Double that blockvalue with talents and your up to 9600 pure block.
Of course this is not calculated yet when or where these things occure but you will atleast get a minimum of 4800 block duo to the Shield Slam Glyph.

With a higher amount of Block Rating you will actually have the double block value up quite often and we can even stretch the value as much as 10.000 wich will be a total successfull block even on the malygos hits.

So % numbers would be 20% dodge 20% parry and 35% blockrating with shieldblock up now and then. A total of 75% avoidence counting block.

Is this a great idea that would work in practice or just an idea that should remain as an idea aswell as it would lower my survivability?

Thank you for your time.

[Lyco]

Depends on the situation really. On bosses I tend to prefer max dodge, while on trash I go for the maximum blockvalue + rating.

I don't have any threat problems on bosses, so the hard slams aren't needed.

But, as a starting tank, I think getting that 30% block ( if that's available with your current gear ) might be a good idea, as it will stop alot of damage. It's better to have 30% block if your dodge isn't that high yet.

I could be wrong, but that's how I feel about it.

[pompuspilot]

in this content i would say go for block over avoidance, the bosses really dont hit that hard. even patchwerk is cake once you get some good gear. now if your group is not very well geared or you run in alot of pug raids then maybe you may wana go for avoidance. i know our team pushes tanks threat now so threat is the way to go for us, which means more block value, hit, expertise

[Xav]

Have the gear available to swap in and use when appropriate. There are situations where a high block value/block rating set will mitigate more damage than anything else. Examples would be say, Patchwerk main tanking, Add tanking on Sartharion, etc.

[thedrawrf]

"We start off with a basevalue on shieldblock with 2500 or maybe even 3000."

How would we start off with numbers that can't be attained in game yet, if ever? Not sure I understand this idea, really.

[Glomgore]

They are obtainable, just not reasonably so. With a complete SBV/SBR set of gear, and gem for STR, it's reachable.

Just not really maintainable with keeping yer 20/20 thinking, or without using all of yer gems slots.

[sud]

I was thinking about this myself actually, except SBV vs. SBR. Recently I've been looking into picking up as many +BR items as possible and with current set I sit at slightly lower than normal avoidance and 37%+ block with some 1500 SBV if I remember correctly.

Now, in theory (with current gear in game) you can get 51%+ block combined with almost 50% total avoidance, with about 27K unbuffed HP. Yes you do make some sacrifices, but...

How would you handle blocking on literally every non-missed/dodged/parried hit? Would you get enough rage from shield spec that way or starve yourself? Would it be worth it to incorporate the DND version of damage reduction into WoW warrior play (ignore ~1500dmg on every physical hit)?

[Aethelas]

I was idling around with the tanking spreadsheet from elitistjerks.com yesterday. While I do not have the skill to fact check the formula's and such, I could make a set off mostly Naxx 25 gear that left me with a total of 0% unblocked hits. Interestingly my 'time to live' didn't change that much. I believe it had around 1100 blockvalue (about 1300 buffed) which, with the big numbers flying around isn't _that_ impressive. I do think that gearing like that would only have situational use...

And I don't have the gear to try something like that out right now to see how it works with rage generation and threat (I'm thinking not too pretty)