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Ok so this has been bothering me. As a warrior tank, would going over the 102.4 avoidance cap be worth it?
Shield Block increased Block by 25% but if your total avoidance exceeds 100% then the excess amount goes to critical block. So in turn, wouldn't going over 102.4 be better for mitigation? Or is it better to just hit 102.4 then stack stamina?
you want passive 102.4 without sb up
You can reach 102.4% with shieldblock in 346 gear, where else do you want to spend your ratings on? Expertise, hit? Only way worth thinking about would be swapping out mastery for pure avoidance but i'd go with as much combined avoidance+migitation as possible to cover those 20s when your shieldblock isn't up.
Is 102.4 passive avoidance even plausible atm? My warrior sockets Mastery/Stam gems, Pure Mastery and parry/mastery and I sit at 88% passive avoidance. I've been reforging to keep parry 1%~ higher than dodge, keeping DR losses at a minimum and just min/maxing every way I can.
you can get to around 97-98% in full bis gear as a warrior...102.4% isn't possible as a warrior in current tier, but that shouldn't stop you from not gemming for avoidance/mastery past 77.4%
Yea I figured as much, Just needed to clarify really. Thanks.
Also, can you count the base 5% to be missed as an avoidance? And if you're an NE the extra 2% does that count too?
yes both count towards 102.4
To sum it up a little:
Reaching 77.4% dodge/parry/block/(boss miss) so SB will reach 102.4% will still leave you open to full, unmitigated hits, ~25% of the time. SB, in a best case scenario, when used on CD, is 33% uptime (well, depending on the fight it can have a much higher effective time, such if you use right after a taunt on the BH boss). So 66% of the time you're still subject to full attacks in most cases. If you use SB as a defensive CD for specific mechanics, then it's going to have a lower uptime, meaning an even higher uptime on the chance of full, umitigated hits.
Addtionally, the block granted that would go above 102.4 isn't lost. It's turned into crit block.
So if you have 92.4 Dodge/Parry/Block/Boss miss and you pop SB, only 10% of the normal block is used to reach 102.4. The other 15% becomes additional crit block chance.
So say for example, you have 20 mastery. Normally you would have:
20% base crit block (protection tree)
30% crit block (20 mastery)
So normally you would have a 50% chance of the block being a crit block. But since you have 15% 'left over' after hitting 102.4%, you now have:
50% + 15% for 65% chance of crit block during the duration of the SB.
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So:
A) The extra block granted by SB is still used, not lost, and
B) Maxing passive dodge/parry/block/boss miss as close to 102.4% (or dodge/parry/block/boss miss/Nelf racial avoidance bonus) smooths incoming damage to the greatest extent, making healers more efficient, so pushing past 77.4% is still very good.
Hi Loganisis,
Nice guide, I agree wholeheartedly with just about everything you said; though I believe talents like Blood Craze and Impending Victory can be very useful for the lower level tanks, in particular running Normal 85 dungeons where healers can sometimes go OOM while they themselves are still collecting gear.
My question, if I may: Is what do you make of T12 and the current tanking gear that is providing Hit and Expertise?
My take is that we will all be aiming for Hit and (I hope to a lesser degree) Expertise when 4.3 launches later this year. Do you think that given this [arguable] eventuality that we should care less about Critical Block now and 'go with the flow' of T12 and delve into Hit and/or Expertise?
Thanks
From what i read between the lines they will "fix" Dk tanks with a few changes in 4.3 one of them making deathstrike always heal/shield so making hit/expertise just as worthless as it is for warriors/paladins now. Major changes to other tanks won't happen until 5.0
"Again, these aren't the kind of changes we will hotfix in. It's going to take a lot of thought and a lot of feedback from players to get things feeling right. We'd like to introduce the tanking changes more smoothly, but we still want to introduce them"
Hit & expertise are worthless in T12 (except for alyzrasor) but shannox belt, boe neck and tier shoulders have a large amount of mastery to make up for it, exalted rep ring is one of the only 2 options for tankrings. Would avoid other pieces with hit or expertise on them.
As far as the healing talents go, i prefer the dps talents. Tanks can do a decent amount of dps in aoe situations, single target its a bit less. If your healer goes oom dps is too slow or the healer is not doing it right. I wouldn't adjust your spec to account for bad healers in content you'll be out very fast.
1. Necro is bad! :P Let dead threads lie and start a new one.
On to your points:
A. Blood Craze + IV are not better, even at lower levels. This is for several reasons:
i. They heal for less since your own health pool is smaller (unless you're running in T12 gear)
ii. Focusing on DPS (used to be threat) talents means the fight is shorter and mobs run away from you less so the healer can focus better on you.
I'd still stay away from them and focus on ending the fight sooner through DPS talents than almost unrecognizabley small heals. Say you're a new tank at 150k HP with the 15% buff - BC is healing you for 4500 over 5 seconds - which is 900 health a second for 5 seconds, and if there aren't many sources of damage, you're looking at a 3 second swing timer, so 10% chance every 3 seconds to heal for 900 health/s for 5 seconds. IV would be 7500 in that case, but then only in the last 20% of the bosses health, which is less than 20% of the fight since that's the execute phase and many classes are hitting harder then. If IV were throughout the fight, or if BC were it's original 3/6/9%, then it might be a different story. But not as they're currently designed.
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Hit/exp. Exp = twice as valuable as hit. Period.
Now, in 4.3 - I don't think they're going to make the active tanking switch in 4.3 - why? For the reason they released 4.0.1 a month before cata dropped. To give everyone a chance to get used to the changes. They would really screw with 4.3 progression if 75% (or more) of all tanks out there had to relearn how to tank while advancing through progression content.
I think you'll see the active tanking changing in 5.0.1, released ~month before 5.0.3 - the launch of the next x-pac, and not before then.
However - if 4.3 does contain the active tanking changes - I think we need to see the changes first before assigning any value to hit/exp above the current value (worthless and only slightly less worthless).
There is going to be a big difference between if an attack has to land versus if it just can't miss to gain the benefit. If an attack has to land, Exp will be far better than hit. If it just doesn't need to miss, then hit becomes mandatory (much like when it was for taunt swapping) and expertise is ignored.
Then there is also the elephant in the room - what happens to rage generation. If Blizzard turns it into a finite source, how is it generated? Through abilities? Or only through RNG of attacks landing.
Really - there is too much unknown at this point for 4.3/5.0.3 to make anything other than speculations as to what it will be like.