Source: jere
Out of all the options, I think unhittable sounds like the best so far. From an attack table perspective, no hits are landed, which is what this applies to anyways. Even if we sometimes think of a block as a hit, the combat table differentiates between the two.
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ok basics of tanking -Attack table
WIthout any stats, possible outcomes of an attack are
Normal hit
Crushing -shows (crushing) in log and is 1.5X the dmg of a normal hit
Crit-shows "crits" in log and is 2X the dmg of the normal hit.
Dodge-fully avoiding the dmg of the hit.
Parry-fully avoiding the dmg of the hit and your melee attack speed increases for your next hit.
Block-partial to full absorption of an attack. Your block value, which is a result of STR and +block value multiplied by your 30% block value increase (both prot paladins and prot warriors have this.), is the AMOUNT of dmg that is reduced from the dmg of the normal hit.
Miss-Attacker misses. Every player has 5% base miss and miss is increased by defense as much as it does for reducing crit chance.
In patch 3/WotLK, crushings will not be possible from bosses 3 levels are higher as it was in BC.
Warrior shield block in patch 3/WotLK will go to 60s cd , 40s cd with prot talent from 5 or 6s in BC.
So now warriors will fear being normally hit over the occasional crushing that shield block let through in BC (When the 1-2 blocking charges were used before the 5 or 6s cd, next unblocked hit could be a crushing or normal hit.) Now the warrior shield block cd has been increased, so normal hits are possible often. Though, critical block talent and shield block double your BV when you are blocking and shield block raises your block chance* by 100% during those 10s of the 40s cd.
Paladins still have holy shield with 8s cd but the duration increased from 8 to 10s, helping with lag. Though, I had 0 crushings in BC with holy shield of 8 charges with 8s cd/duration, spamming it, where warriors had 5 to 10% crushing occurrence in real wws reports with the shield block of 1-2 charges with 5 to 6s cd. THe good thing is that crushings are gone in WotLK and warriors have doubling BV abilities and talents to make up for the long cd of shield block.
Paladins are inheritently unhittable.
Warriors are hittable but with doubling BV talents.
This is roughly equal in dmg mitigation and has its pros and cons.
Healers will see a predictable dmg intake on apaladin where warriors will have spiky dmg with normal hits. Though warriors can save their shield block for certain predictable parts of the fights, where paladins can be consistently mitigating to help with special attacks that are random and not predictable.
(By the way, I am paladin tank on Burning Blade, have experience with SSC and Hyjal but I took a break from WoW for the past few months and I have been playing on my paladin on Public Test realm for patch 3 the last few weeks and going crazy researching all the new changes for protection paladins and protection warriors. Please don't hate me cause I am paladin. :/
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Defense itself does not cap in effectiveness (under normal gearing), just the -crit contribution.
