Block Val on Diminishing Returns

[Blaze Mcgee]

Alright, reading the patch notes today, I reread the part about BV being on Diminishing returns after 30X your lvl and capping at 34.5X per level.

Im not a huge fan of BV really and this makes it more so. With this change in 3.2, is that going to make BV and perhaps block in general for warriors even less appealing?

Note:
lvl 80 diminishing returns start at 2400 and caps at 2760

[Satorri]

Seriously, the caps will not touch anyone in currently available gear unless you're stacking Block Value.

I was playing with it over the weekend, most Warriors/Pallies in the best gear (not stacking block) will still only be sporting 1300-1600 after the patch. If you stack it hard, you could hit the cap with the gear available, but only if you're using the best block gear from Naxx/Uld etc.

I am curious though about what this means for using Shield Block. I assume if you have 2k block value and you pop Shield Block, it won't cap you at 2760, just apply a multiplier. Otherwise it would be a silly way to work it.

[Blaze Mcgee]

would it affect critical block at all? seeing as thats a pretty important talent, it would be foolish of blizz to let that happen

[Satorri]

I'm really sure it shouldn't, that would be even worse.

[TomHuxley]

The only part on diminishing returns is how much damage your shield slam does. The mitigation effect of block is not subject to diminishing returns.

The clear intent is for us to start viewing block as more of a defensive stat than an offensive one (IMO paving the way for 4.0 changes that will scale SS damage from strength or AP and let block work off of a percent of incoming damage). As such, critical block will not be altered, etc.

[Blaze Mcgee]

Ah, that makes much more sense. Thanks for the clarification. I for one will be very excited when I will see pretty sheild slam numbers thanks more so to my STR stat

[Lae]

It seems as though they 'forgot' to include the capping on blocks. I'm still missing a few items out of my block PvP set, but with Shield Block active I was getting up to ~6000 SBV and ended up critting an 18K slam.

Edit: 18K was on a sundered target, but no battleground berserking buff.

[Tengor]

I really wish this will be true...

[Satorri]

PS, I'm an idiot and forgot one of the central issues of the block cap...

It doesn't apply to anything other than Shield Slam and Shield of Righteousness damage contribution...

There is no cap on how much you can block, you will never see your block value cap off on the character sheet.

This cap does apply to the buffed up block value from Shield Block however. This change was designed as way to limit the burst value of shield slam in pvp, but for all intents and purposes, after playing around with it, it doesn't seem remotely as bad as some seem to have expected, and barely noticeable in pve unless you're using your super block value set (<3).

[Roarc]

I did some tests last night and the SBV limits are set to our base block value only. I'm not sure about "on use items" if they are included in this or not (it might be they very well are) but shield block does in fact double our SBV for our shield slams still.

- My highest crits on a dummy last night was 14.4K and that's with out enrage at about 2950 BV on my gear. The normal hits didn't scale over about 3200 however.

- Doing a heroic in my normal heroic gear I was reaching 10K slams here and there.

With the above in mind we still have a lot of head-room as warriors to scale in. But there is still no need what so ever to stack BV items. It will simply be a damage reduction dealer and bonus for us.

I also noticed ArP gives a very solid boost to SS crits. I'm wondering if this is they way to go in the future for high threat / dps as a prot warrior tanking or perhaps doing PVP.

[Vais]

Also did some testing on the training dummies. With 2800 SBV normal hits didn´t scale over 3200 too. So whats the best deal for PvP right now? Reducing SBV until you start hitting for less than 3200 and then equip ArP? I tried a mixed Equip with as much ArP as I could get and 2400 SBV. I could hit the dummy for around 4k normal hits and for 12-14k critical. So the max damage for crits didn´t change from 2800SBV to 2400SBV+ArP.
Yesterday we scored 10-4 and went up from 1912 to nearly 2k arena rating still using the full SBV-Set but I will give it a try with ArP. Maybe someone could do the maths. How much SBV can you stack before you start wasting points and what would be the most potent substitute?

[Sirloinsteak]

I did some tests last night and the SBV limits are set to our base block value only. I'm not sure about "on use items" if they are included in this or not (it might be they very well are) but shield block does in fact double our SBV for our shield slams still.

- My highest crits on a dummy last night was 14.4K and that's with out enrage at about 2950 BV on my gear. The normal hits didn't scale over about 3200 however.

- Doing a heroic in my normal heroic gear I was reaching 10K slams here and there.

With the above in mind we still have a lot of head-room as warriors to scale in. But there is still no need what so ever to stack BV items. It will simply be a damage reduction dealer and bonus for us.

I also noticed ArP gives a very solid boost to SS crits. I'm wondering if this is they way to go in the future for high threat / dps as a prot warrior tanking or perhaps doing PVP.

i was thinking the same thing with arp ... after seeing the massive differance in threat with ua spec with swords compared to a mace ... the mace destroyed the sword in threat by .. well a hell of alot ... there are also the tanking gloves in ulduar with the armor pen on em .... is stacking armor pen over or equal to strength now a massive threat booster for a prot warrior ??? can anyone do some testing .. it will be interesting at the very least

[drae]

If you have a Grim Toll - Item - World of Warcraft its easy to get an idea of how ArP will effect your tps / dps. Just keep an eye on how your threat / damage jumps when the proc goes off.

I normally find that equipping Grim Toll and Mark of Norgannon - Item - World of Warcraft over my standard stam trinkets really pushes my TPS up. From memory I believe the Grim Toll Proc was worth ~1000tps when I'm really rocking the rotation.

[Porcell]

I guess a few interesting-ish data points here, from whacking on a level 80 dummy.

I'm wearing my full Block Value gear, which is 2477 BV on the character sheet. I hit shield slam once (to activate Glyph of Blocking) which raised my BV to 2661, then recorded 20 Shield Slams all with GoBlock active and 2661 BV

12 hits averaging 2861 per hit
8 crits averaging 6285

Then I did a bunch of hits where I hit shield slam to activate Glyph of Blocking, waiting for SS to come off CD, popped Shield Block and performed a series of 2 Shield Slams that had both Glyph of Blocking and Shield Block active, character sheet BV of 4496.

4345 Hit, 9571 Crit
4347 Hit, 4337 Hit
4341 Hit, 4362 Hit
4345 Hit, 4350 Hit

So, explanations for this?

"Shield Slam: The benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level."

It doesn't seem like my Shield Slam was limited to 2760 Block Value. I was just a bit under the cap (2661) on my normal hits. Popping shield block SHOULD have increased my BV from 2661 up to 2760 (for the purposes of SS Damage anyway), but I'd say the ~1500 damage increase says that something else is happening... no cap? Bug?

[KnThrak]

I would much more assume that to not make the Shield Block timer near-useless for the purpose of spiked threat, they made it temporarily "double the cap". So it circumvents the whole problem, but only for it's own purposes. Because Glyph of Blocking still seems to cap both without and with Shield Block active for plenty people.

[Khordam]

- Shield Slam provides damage of its own (something around 1200). This damage is not affected by DR.
- Dummies have armor.
- You were in a stance, and with One-handed Weapons Specialization.
- The DR likely kicks in at base BV, i.e. before Shield Mastery, meta gem, glyph bonuses.

[Vais]

Maybe it´s a good time to reenable the good old shieldslam world record. Now that SS is capped it would be interresting how high you can crit on a fully sundered lvl70 dummy.
only self-buffed. some information on the gear used would be helpfull too of course.

[markv]

If they did put in a cap it's not working right now. I sit @~3010sbv unbuffed and hit the 7k mark now with SB+Trinket and have seen SS crits hit almost the 20k Mark on sundered targets. This has gone up as 3.1 I was hitting about 16k SS crits and getting close to 6k SBV with trinkets etc.

[Roarc]

From my testing the limit is in place but it only affects base block value. This comes from:

- BV on gear
- Strength
- On use BV item (trinkets)

What makes you scale beyond the "limit" seems to be external modifiers such as:

- Stances
- Shield Block
- Set-bonuses (Tier 7)

I'm not sure if the Glyph of Blocking works or not outside of the DR. The matter of the fact is however, we CAN get high burst hits if everything clicks (i.e. 15K slams). It's however relatively unlikely and that's somewhere where our peak is.

Running with 3K or 6K SBV shouldn't do any difference unless things are bugged at the moment. I get my 13-15K crits with 3K SBV and I don't think they'll scale much higher (if any) with 6K SBV. I'd opt for reaching 3K and then go for ArP or Crit assuming you're hit and expertise-capped.

[Dragaan]

I am definitely still seeing many 10-15k shield slams. I usually run with 2750ish block unbuffed, and there is a pretty big difference when I pop shield block before a slam. I have hit plate for 16k and cloth for 21k (no gimmicks) since 3.2.