Everything tanks need to know about caps.

[GravityDK]

Further to the avoidance value of expertise, that Jere referenced earlier, Theck has worked out the values for other classes too.

For Icecrown Citadel, expertise is roughly 91% as effective as dodge rating for reducing incoming damage, assuming a boss swing speed of 1.4 seconds (after JotJ). It varies significantly with boss attack speed though, from 78% @ 1.2 to 154% @ 2.4 speed.
For Warriors, this range narrows to 52-102%, with an "average" of 60% at 1.4-speed.
For Druids, it's 49-98%, with an "average" of 60%
For Death Knights, the range becomes 36-71%, with an "average" of 46%.
For bosses outside of Icecrown, we would use an average swing speed of around 2.0, giving average values of 87% for paladins (53%-104% range), 57% for warriors (30%-69%), 56% for druids (28%-68%), and 29%-45% for Death Knights (28%-52%).

All of these can be seen in the plots in the "results" section.
Each point of expertise rating (above the soft-cap) also gives a Paladin about 60% the threat that a point of STR would.

[Rizilliant]

Now correct me if im wrong, but ive been told (since WotLK) that the DR of BV began at 30 x [player level], and the hard "cap" came at 34.5x[player's level]....is this information incorrect>? i though u could only mitigate so much incoming damage via a block>?

P.S. relinking from an earlier Jere post of the parry haste enabled bosses... Icc being Lady Deathwhisper,and Sindragosa...And ToC i belive it was only NR Beasts here.

[jere]

Now correct me if im wrong, but ive been told (since WotLK) that the DR of BV began at 30 x [player level], and the hard "cap" came at 34.5x[player's level]....is this information incorrect>? i though u could only mitigate so much incoming damage via a block>?

That formula only applies to Shield Slam and Shield of Righteousness

The way it works is that it starts at 30*Player Level, and the "end resultant block" tapers off at 34.5*player level.

So BV stays the same till 2400. After that, it is reduced by a quadratic formula that approaches 2760. So if you manage to get 2760 BV from gear, it might only give you say 2600 BV for the purposes of SS or ShoR. Gong to 2800 BV from gear might only give you 2625 BV towards SS and ShoR. So you can still get stuff out of more than 2760 BV, but it gets severely diminished (not for defensive purposes though...untouched there). For the sake of example, say you reached 3000 BV and it gave you 2760 for SS, then anymore BV from gear would only give you 2760 as well (so 3100, 3200, 3500, 9999999 BV, etc. all would give 2760).

Those are made up numbers by the way. I don't have an updated chart for that stuff anymore after they changed the equation.

[Andenthal]

Avoidance Cap
The avoidance cap refers to the point where your combined dodge, parry and chance to be missed is so high that you will never be hit by an avoidable attack. This is reached at 101.8% combined avoidance.
While this cap is mostly theoretical at the moment, I think we may see people able to reach it when (stacking cooldowns together) before Cataclysm hits. It looks to be a lot of fun to get to this cap, but I doubt it will have much use, since you need to sacrifice so much to gain it that it will be little more then a novelty.

You had it correct at 102.4%, but then changed it to an incorrect 101.8%. Unfortunately Synapse is incorrect. Each level the mob gains an extra 0.8% chance to hit you, not 0.6%. (-.02% for each of Miss/Block/Dodge/Parry)

[jere]

He wasn't counting block, as it isn't avoidance. 101.8% would be correct for avoidance only.

[Arikak]

I'm kind of surprised that this thread hasn't been stickied. Of course, much if its content will be obsolete in 4 - 6 months.

[Rizilliant]

TY Jere....All this time ive been under the impression a warr/pally blocks, at best, 2760 dmg. From what im reading here, am i to understand that theres no "cap" on how much incoming dmg we can block? The "cap" is ONLY fo the offensive, shield attacks?

[Leucifer]

Heh. Nice to see Gravity here......
And thank you for that bit on expertise because it IS ACCURATE.
Expertise is a "hidden" defensive stat. I don't really touch on that aspect of it here, but you covered that base well.

Anyways..........

Nicely done and covers the topic fairly well in summary. I just wish you would have gotten away from using the term "cap". Or set about defining what is meant by certain terms immediately.

A lot of the confusion has always stemmed from a lack of understanding of the idea "cap". So, in order to clarify, here's what I have come to understand.

Cap - Point at which a certain ability is considered maximized or subject to a significant decrease in return on value, or significant decrease in value gained in comparison to resources spent to increase

Example: Hit Cap for melee attacks is at 8%. At this value, you have reduced the potential to miss a target effectively zero. This does not include a target's avoidance ability, but reflects the passive, built-in mechanic for a miss.

Hard Cap - Point at which a statistic is essentially maximized in it's effective value or the diminished returns on investment are so dramatic as to make an increase beyond this point meaningless

Example: For Hit Cap, an additional 8% to hit negates the game's built-in 8% chance to miss for a character with maximized weapon skill. Investment in hit beyond this point yields little value as a greater than 100% chance to hit does not translate to useful value in gameplay.... meaning a 102% chance to hit does not increase damage or provide other benefits.

Soft Cap - Point at which a statistic is optimized for a particular purpose of the statistic. Value on investment may be decreased beyond this point but return on investment still is effective for purposes.

Example: For defense, an optimized value of 540 reduces the chance for a level 83 mob to deliver a critical strike against a character to 0%. This is considered a key value for a tank because it essentially eliminates the potential for an un-healable large damage spike to their character. Defense beyond this point still yields significant avoidance improvements however and has value to the tank.

One thing to realize about all of these caps, is that all of these abilities or statistics have functions, or mathematical equations, that look a lot like this:



In this example, the X axis, or bottom of the graph going across represents the points invested into a stat. The Y axis, or left side values, represent the "return" on the points invested..... or basically.... the value you get for each point invested.

Looking at this, you can see that for each point invested, you get a value of 2 in return. This pattern holds true until a certain point, in this case, an X value of 20. After investing 20 points, you no longer get 2 points for each point invested, but much, much less.

The value of 20 in this case would represent a "hard cap", since the value gained is significantly less for each point you invest into it.

Now, let's take a quick look at this:



This example is good for a complex stat like defense in which the value of the points invested in it have more than one effect.

In this example, we have two outputs for each point invested. This graph is somewhat like how the defense stat works with the blue series representing the increase of the ability to not be critically hit by a mob and the pink series representing the increase in avoidance. As you can see, there is a certain point where the blue series stops its rapid progression, but the pink series continues to gain in value as steadily as it had previously. It's fairly similar as to how defense actually works in game in that, at a certain point, you stop getting value for points invested in defense for just one of the effects that is desired, but you still gain significant value on the other effects that are dependent on this stat!

I know, to many of you this is understood. For some, it may not be as readily apparent (hence, why we still keep getting questions pertaining to hit/expertise/defense/etc).

.................................................. .

Now, as to my own personal views on the original post, I do disagree with him/her as to the value of hit and expertise to a tank. They say:

A note on hit and expertise.
For both hit and expertise, the general thing to remember is this: "If you do enough threat, you don't need more of them. It is important, though, to realize that having more of either of them will make your threat less spiky. While this effect is minor, having a string of misses at the beginning of a fight can cause someone to grab aggro.
My advice would be to not worry about getting to either cap, but not completely ignoring the stat either. Gemming or enchanting for hit or expertise shouldn't be needed.

Here's my issue with this, from a practical perspective.

You say, "if you do enough threat, you don't need more of them." What generates threat? What are the mechanics of threat in-game? It all revolves around a tank's damage output. I'm sorry to say.... if you are NOT HITTING OR DAMAGING YOUR TARGET CONSISTENTLY, you are not generating threat.
I agree with the idea that you don't need to be capped with these..... but you need to be somewhere close to the cap. For example, if your hit rating places you at 4%..... I think you're asking for trouble. If your hit rating is sitting at 240.... with like 7.2% additional hit chance.... you're close enough where that additional 0.8% is probably not the end of the world in most circumstances.
Same with expertise. If you're sitting at zero..... you're asking for a hurtin'. If you have 17.... it's still better than nothing.

My rule of thumb with tanking is that you need to try and use gear that gets you near those caps, with defense of 540 being first priority...... hit rating of 276 (I'm probably off by a few points) being next priority balanced with expertise of 26. I believe that you have more flexibility with those last two. I myself, run with my hit rating at 240 or so, but my expertise is AT 26. So, I might very well miss now and then, but I know that I've reduced a boss's avoidance to zip. But after you hit that defense rating of 540, you have a LOT of wiggle room elsewhere. Try different balances of stats and items..... look to see what gives you the effect you really want. So long as you can hold over that 540 defense mark, you have some room to play with (and even then, having MORE defense than 540 is not going to hurt and will likely only help)

But hit and expertise are going to impact your threat, and not insignificantly.

All said though...... my vote is that this one is worthy of a "sticky".

EDIT: Side note. In Example number two, the way defense actually works is more like this:

With blue representing the DECREASE in the chance to be critically hit and pink representing increase in avoidance. And no, none of these charts are based on true calculated values and are given only as visual examples to show how stats change as points are invested in them.

[jere]

TY Jere....All this time ive been under the impression a warr/pally blocks, at best, 2760 dmg. From what im reading here, am i to understand that theres no "cap" on how much incoming dmg we can block? The "cap" is ONLY fo the offensive, shield attacks?

Correct. Incoming damage blocking is straight forward BV (well with talents and such). Only SS and ShoR get diminished, and that is on BV contributions to their damage.