Protection Warrior Reforging Questions

Protection warrior here, starting to get into endgame raiding much more, and I've been having questions about what I should be reforging to. First time poster on Tankspot, as well.

Before we start, let me say that I KNOW I should have Mastery on everything I own, and that it's my most important stat. My real question is between parry/dodge. I've heard some people say they should be as close as possible, but others say my parry should lead my dodge. I've even heard someone say it should be the other way. Basically I want to know which of these is true. Currently, I'm sitting at 13.64% dodge, 16.67% parry, and 51.16% block.

Any and all help is much appreciated.

Parry should lead dodge, though by how much is a tricky question to answer, the mastery you have the more parry should lead, however the further into diminishing returns you get, the less parry should lead.

The concept of "diminishing returns" has always been a bit strange to understand for me. Could you explain to me briefly what it is, and when it starts to kick in for parry or dodge?

Basically the more of a stat rating you stack the less of that stat it gets you. The following example is hyperbole for demonstrations:

Say warriordude has 0 parry rating (and 0 dodge rating), and he gets a sword with 1parry rating on it, that parry rating increase his chance to parry by 1%. Next boss a shield drops that also has 1 parry rating on it, if he equips it he goes up to 2 parry rating in total, but this gives him a total increase in parry chance of 1.8%. The first parry rating bought him 1%parry, the next parry rating only bought him 0.8% additional parry.

Now lets rewind the clock and say rather getting a shield drop, he gets a trinket drop with 1 dodge rating on it, because this is his first point of Dodge rating it doesn't suffer from diminishing returns at all so buys him a whole 1% dodge chance. So he now has a 1% chance to dodge and a 1% chance to parry. A total of 2% increase in avoidance.

The above is all hyperbole but DR stars as soon as you have stats, it just doesn't make alot of difference, there's no break point where it suddenly start kicking in, it just continually kicks in more and more as you stack a stat more and more,.

This is why paladins and Death Knights like to have balanced or near balanced avoidance ratings, since parry and Dodge tend to be easily reforged into one another they get more total avoidance from their total ratings by putting them into whichever stat (dodge or parry) they have the least rating currently in.

Warriors for the most part are the same except we have the Hold the Line Talent, which means with increase the chance of our blocks being critical (double sized) for 10 seconds after parrying, which means for overall damage reduction it pays to parry slightly more than it does to doge to increase the uptime on the HtL buff. The actual break point is a little complicated to calculate, and generally should be done with either simming or someone else head, or a site you trust.

As far as warrior tanks are concerned the only stats that have diminishing returns are Parry rating, dodge rating, and Armour. and for most

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

Basically the more of a stat rating you stack the less of that stat it gets you. The following example is hyperbole for demonstrations:

Say warriordude has 0 parry rating (and 0 dodge rating), and he gets a sword with 1parry rating on it, that parry rating increase his chance to parry by 1%. Next boss a shield drops that also has 1 parry rating on it, if he equips it he goes up to 2 parry rating in total, but this gives him a total increase in parry chance of 1.8%. The first parry rating bought him 1%parry, the next parry rating only bought him 0.8% additional parry.

Now lets rewind the clock and say rather getting a shield drop, he gets a trinket drop with 1 dodge rating on it, because this is his first point of Dodge rating it doesn't suffer from diminishing returns at all so buys him a whole 1% dodge chance. So he now has a 1% chance to dodge and a 1% chance to parry. A total of 2% increase in avoidance.

The above is all hyperbole but DR stars as soon as you have stats, it just doesn't make alot of difference, there's no break point where it suddenly start kicking in, it just continually kicks in more and more as you stack a stat more and more,.

This is why paladins and Death Knights like to have balanced or near balanced avoidance ratings, since parry and Dodge tend to be easily reforged into one another they get more total avoidance from their total ratings by putting them into whichever stat (dodge or parry) they have the least rating currently in.

Warriors for the most part are the same except we have the Hold the Line Talent, which means with increase the chance of our blocks being critical (double sized) for 10 seconds after parrying, which means for overall damage reduction it pays to parry slightly more than it does to doge to increase the uptime on the HtL buff. The actual break point is a little complicated to calculate, and generally should be done with either simming or someone else head, or a site you trust.

As far as warrior tanks are concerned the only stats that have diminishing returns are Parry rating, dodge rating, and Armour. and for most

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Alright, that makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to spell it out for me. So with that out of the way, would you say as long as my dodge % is around 2-3% below my parry chance, would you say that's an acceptable margin to keep them at?

Probably. Rightly or wrongly I keep mine closer together, just under 2% less dodge than parry but i'm more concerned with getting unhittable that maximising the damage reductions.

One thing to keep in minfd is that wind walk is 600dodge rating ~33% time, Kings is also a lump of parry as is battle shout and their equivalents so if those are gonna be up in raid s its worth reforging to optimise whith those up

That's a good point. I'll play around with that idea.

Also, just to make sure, I should never bother reforging/gemming/enchanting for hit/expertise, correct? At least on the current patch.

No, at present Expertise is approximately zero, and hit is worth slightly more half of that.

But do consider having a 'threat set' with some odd pieces of expertise/hit gear for stuff like trash clears or heroics, just for quality of life.

Oh yes, there's nothing like blasting through VP or LCotTV in less than 5 minutes.

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Originally Posted by swelt

But do consider having a 'threat set' with some odd pieces of expertise/hit gear for stuff like trash clears or heroics, just for quality of life.

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I'll consider making that, but I still have a bit of work to do on my current tanking set, anyway.

And also to Tengenstein, by "unhittable" you mean having enough combined avoidance to make every attack against you either a block, parry, or miss, right?

Unhittable when parry+dodge+miss+block=102,4%

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Originally Posted by Bigbad

Unhittable when parry+dodge+miss+block=102,4%

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I see. I think I've heard of the formula for calculating how close you are to that cap, but could you refresh my memory of it (assuming you know it offhand)

3.6% raid buffed.

3.6% off raid buffed.

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

3.6% off raid buffed.

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I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean by "3.6% (off) raid buffed." Could you explain?

I think he is saying you get 3.6% from raid buffs (Kings/Mark, Battle shout, Mastery Food, Mastery Flask). It might not be 3.6%, for me these buffs only give me 3.47% (because of the amount of parry I have DR kicks in a bit more).

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Originally Posted by Pagezero

I think he is saying you get 3.6% from raid buffs (Kings/Mark, Battle shout, Mastery Food, Mastery Flask). It might not be 3.6%, for me these buffs only give me 3.47% (because of the amount of parry I have DR kicks in a bit more).

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Oh, I see.

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Originally Posted by Zulrann

I see. I think I've heard of the formula for calculating how close you are to that cap, but could you refresh my memory of it (assuming you know it offhand)

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parry+dodge+miss+block=102,4% That's the formula lol :P

Just add up your parry,dodge & block and add the standard 5% miss (nightelf racial gives extra misschance). The 2,4% is cause of bosses being 3 levels higher. Its 0,2% block, parry, dodge, miss per level adding up to 2,4% for 3 levels.

If you google unhittable macro you should get a few usable macro's for ingame.

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Originally Posted by swelt

But do consider having a 'threat set' with some odd pieces of expertise/hit gear for stuff like trash clears or heroics, just for quality of life.

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Hmm, just put on DPS gear... not just expertise/hit, but everything. I do 5-mans in almost all DPS gear except my shield & weapon. At appropriate iLvls and a moderately competent healer, you don't need the survival stats and you will do 30k+ dps on trash pulls.

Just remember to go back to normal sets for tough bosses (or raid night).