Prot warrior Critical block mechanics: Help me clarify!

I'll apologize right off the bat for my explanation that's doomed to be a bit cumbersome.

As I'm understanding things, our chance to critically block an attack is based on a percentage of our chance to block the attack. So, with a base 8% chance to block an attack, and a base 8% chance to critically block the attack, that would mean we have an 8% chance to block 60% of the damage when we block, or a 0.64% chance to critically block in general. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that, because all of the following assumes the above...

Anyways, as our chance to block goes up, our chance to critically block when we're blocking also goes up. The implications here are rather interesting, because it means that our mastery has cumulative returns when it comes to critical block. On top of that, we get to a point where each point of mastery actually gives us more critical block chance than block chance.

10% - 1%
20% - 4%
30% - 9%
40% - 16%
50% - 25%
60% - 36%

At a 10% chance to block, we have 1% chance to critically block... 20% chance, 4% crit... etc... From 50% to 60%, our chance to block increases by 10%, but our chance to critically block increases by 11%. This means that even if we're unhittable, mastery remains a fantastic stat for melee damage mitigation.

With that in mind, I'm curious how critical block fits into the avoidance table. Is there a second calculation when we block to determine if it's a critical block? Or does critical block chance push block off the table? If it's the latter, then mastery is slightly better than if it's the former, as becoming critically block capped is much more viable, theoretically.

edit:

Made a mistake.. Base mastery is 8. Base block chance would then be 12%. Looking at my chance to block, it also seems that the way I was thinking critical block chance was calculated was wrong. I had assumed that 3% overall chance to block was just too much, compared to the paladin's 2.25%, especially when half of that 3% goes to doubling the amount of damage mitigated.

edit again:

Concerning the bolded part, turns out this is incorrect and I was correct in my original assumption.

You forgot to add in the 15% base Block Chance for being Protection :P

But in response to your main question:
Critical Block chance is a chance on blocks, which means it requires a Block in the combat table to be able to work.
Blizzard did NOT create a separate roll in the combat table just for Protection Warriors.
This does mean that the value of Mastery is indeed exponentially increased untill it's dropoff point (hence the number of threads about it)

agree with war totem --- and ive nerded out this weekend reading everything i could find on block and crit block.

i wrote a big long post but ... i ended up confusing myself.... :)

from everything i've read crit block, is the chance that IF YOU BLOCK, the damage will be reduced by 2x. ie reduced 60%.

Alright, so I was correct in my long explanation of how I saw it. Even without it falling onto the table, that is still really awesome.

So, as I understand it, the attack falls onto the table... if the attack is blocked, then there's a calculation to determine if it was critically blocked. Mastery remains very valuable (increasingly so) until the player reaches 100% critical block chance, at which point, every attack would be reduced by 60% damage.

So it requires 50% more mastery for a warrior to obtain the same amount of block rating as a pally (another point that was really confusing me), but we have a chance to block double damage.

Yes, there is increasing returns.

It is also worth noting that the critical block portion of Hold the Line is affected by this as well. The more Block you have, the more valuable the Critical Block granted by Parry is. This generally contributes to Parry being a lot more valuable than Dodge when you have a fair amount of Mastery.

The oddities of it are the dynamic of:
a) When using Shield Block, additional Block % over the 100% cap (not getting into the 85 vs. 88 issue here :P) is converted to Critical Block %, which is quite useful but slightly less efficient due to the two-roll system.
b) When passively capped at 100% in the combat table (not really possible right now) further Mastery does not contribute anything but Critical Block, which is pretty similar to a).
c) When the combat table is completely full, raw avoidance can be more valuable than Mastery at mitigation and thus the value of Mastery starts to slowly shrink down again as the chance to Block is reduced.

So, the dynamic (especially with Parry) is very complex. It's really an ever-changing number in terms of balancing the avoidance stats.

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Originally Posted by WarTotem

You forgot to add in the 15% base Block Chance for being Protection :P

But in response to your main question:
Critical Block chance is a chance on blocks, which means it requires a Block in the combat table to be able to work.
Blizzard did NOT create a separate roll in the combat table just for Protection Warriors.
This does mean that the value of Mastery is indeed exponentially increased untill it's dropoff point (hence the number of threads about it)

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On my character sheet, I have 23.59 mastery, giving 35.385% block chance and crit block chance. I get 0.45% from the 40 block rating on my shield. That puts me up to 35.835%. You say base block chance is 15%. That brings me to 50.835%. Why does my character sheet show 55.835% block chance? Where's the other 5% coming from? Isn't it 5% base for wearing a shield, 15% from prot spec, and then you add on mastery? So more like 20% base dodge if you're a prot warrior, then block and crit block increase equally after that. So if you have a 50% block chance, you should have a 30% crit block chance. 60%/30%, 70%/40%, etc. unless Shield Block is active.

yup, fogot the absolute base, having a shit day, sry :P

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Originally Posted by WarTotem

yup, fogot the absolute base, having a shit day, sry :P

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No worries. Hope your day gets better.

as i understand it you block and your critical block ( as a prot warrior, the only ones with critical block ) should be the same ( w/o shield block being up and minus the .45% from he shield enchant)
and prot pallies ( who do dont have critical block ) gain 2.25% block (v. 1.5%) for every mastery...
OMG i am about to confuse myself again....

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Originally Posted by Doc309

as i understand it you block and your critical block ( as a prot warrior, the only ones with critical block ) should be the same ( w/o shield block being up and minus the .45% from he shield enchant)
and prot pallies ( who do dont have critical block ) gain 2.25% block (v. 1.5%) for every mastery...
OMG i am about to confuse myself again....

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The block and critical block chance you gain from mastery will coincide, but your overall block chance is higher due to a couple things. Being prot gives you more block chance, and just having a shield equipped gives you block chance... which I didn't know until this thread to be fair.

Also, because of critical block works, the math to determine the chance you have to critically block is wonky once you pass the unhittable cap. Your chance to critically block goes down if you pop an avoidance trinket CD, for example. While that may sound like a bad thing, your chance to critically block compared to your chance to block ratio will remain the same, it's just your extra avoidance will effectively compress your blocking on the combat table. If you parry, your critical block chance goes up by 10% of your chance to block. If you pop shield block, the same thing happens.

As shown above, mastery just gets better and better for prot tanks as you get more of it. The value of mastery compared to our other stats is pretty difficult to pinpoint because of that... especially considering that the melee hits we take will go up as the content continues. Every point of mastery is pretty much an investment for more mastery. As you gain avoidance, though... the value of mastery decreases in comparison to other stats (assuming you're unhittable).

The value of Mastery has technicly 4 drop-off points:
1) Soft Cap of 77.4% avoidance+block
2) Hard Block Cap (102.4% avoidance+block)
3) Soft Crit Block Cap (50 Mastery)
4) Hard Crit Block Cap (66.67 Mastery)

All values of Mastery Rating in between those are increased dependant on the amount of Mastery you already have (through increased block or crit block chances). Because Mastery Rating does not grant extra crit block once you hit Unhittability, it's pretty safe to say that this breakpoint will be the efficiency drop-off. In fact, the value of Mastery will decrease after this point as you replace block by avoidance.

The priority in avoidance/block will most likely be:
Block to 77.4% unhittability > 'decent' level of Parry > 'decent' level of Dodge > Block to passive Unhittable > replace block with Parry > replace Block with Dodge > stack more crit block

I think that once we finally reach a point where true unhittable is feasible (possibly HM 4.1?), gemming tendencies will switch to a more stam oriented focus while meeting socket bonuses and reforging will flowing the progression wartotem listed.

One I'm passively unhittable, I plan to gem stamina, and expertise/hit for socket bonuses.

I'll probably continue reforging avoidance to mastery, though.

Thanks for all info. folks,,,,,i really had no idea how the block mech. actually worked. I LOVE reading these informative post. This is why i LOVE tankspot.

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Originally Posted by Takethecake

I think that once we finally reach a point where true unhittable is feasible (possibly HM 4.1?), gemming tendencies will switch to a more stam oriented focus while meeting socket bonuses and reforging will flowing the progression wartotem listed.

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Blizzard already stated they might give T12+ bosses more expertise to compensate for the higher avoidance levels. Unless they start tossing around an absurd amount of bursty magical damage i can't see a reason to stack stamina.

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Unless they start tossing around an absurd amount of bursty magical damage i can't see a reason to stack stamina.

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They are changing shield block and spell reflect mechanics to have more of an impact on magic damage as is. I think it's to combat the 'use SB on CD' train of thought.