[Warrior] Critical Block Mechanics

[Dots]

* In order for Mastery to be of equal value as the Paladin one, you need 100% critical block chance (at which point you gain no value from mastery). With the +1% metagem, you need atleast 97,66% crit block chance.

This statement can be a bit misleading because it only applies to the total value of all your mastery points. The value per point beats the paladin mastery sooner than that, the warrior mastery just starts out quite low.

The paladin mastery is simply too high still, it should be more like 2% block per point of mastery to be balanced with avoidance stats and the warrior version. Even then paladins will probably get to unhittable way too soon.

[Airowird]

At 0 ratings, Mastery during SB is already about the same as Avoidance
Using the stats from the premades, Mastery without SB comes close (>95%) to avoidance ratings
That means that the turning point will somewhere be in your blue gearing, after which you're pretty much better off reforging to Mastery (or un-forging)

I indicated the important parts for you Bigbad

Also, there is no balance point. I already tried to figure that out and the balancing issue lies directly with the exponantial equations, making it impossible to make a simple "after X avoidance, get Mastery" conclusion. From that same math I have also proven that;
* with SB on CD, you need only 1 Mastery Rating to make SB on CD better than Avoidance (at any level) up to unhittable ofcourse
* without any SB at all, Mastery requires insanely great gear to beat avoidance
* to get Mastery to reduce an equal amount of damage as it does for Paladins, you need 100% critical block
* the math needed to calculate mastery gain vs avoidance is severely more difficult than the math needed for ArP before they removed it.

[Maèl]

I don't get your point here. I agree that if you have "high" chances to avoid, crit block or block dmg, the full hits would look like unexpected spikes for the healers. This will even be more the case when you use SB often. Since it will reduce the full hits even more. But I don't see it as something for healers to complain about. If you are at nearly full health single full hits should not scare the healers. If you avoid / mitigate most of the time this should be quite often the case. (If it's around a breath or something CDs would be used and healers would not see the difference if the breath was the problem or a melee hit.) Most of the dmg a warrior get's should be easy to heal.

It will only be a problem, if paladins will be unhittable at this point and never see the full hits and if it would be something comparable for bears (healers will always see the big spikes for dks, even if they would feel less hard to heal against).

I was speaking as a healer which is my main character. I HATE unpredictability.
See, it's also a matter of perception. Most of the time a warrior will be either not hit or simply stoked(and fondled) by a boss. But once in a while it will be full damage. That's a spike. First you get lulled into false security and then you get woken up. I don't like that.

[swelt]

As much as I love having my thread turn into yet another avoidance vs. EH debate, would it be possible for people to stick to discussing actualy mechanical issues or theory about Critical Block specifically instead?

So can you answer this question? Yellow socket: Mastery or Dodge? Ignoring whether or not it's pure mastery or mastery+stam etc, if I follow the latest summary it seems that Mastery always trumps Dodge?

[Bigbad]

Also, there is no balance point. I already tried to figure that out and the balancing issue lies directly with the exponantial equations, making it impossible to make a simple "after X avoidance, get Mastery" conclusion. From that same math I have also proven that;
* with SB on CD, you need only 1 Mastery Rating to make SB on CD better than Avoidance (at any level) up to unhittable ofcourse
* without any SB at all, Mastery requires insanely great gear to beat avoidance
* to get Mastery to reduce an equal amount of damage as it does for Paladins, you need 100% critical block
* the math needed to calculate mastery gain vs avoidance is severely more difficult than the math needed for ArP before they removed it.

That mastery during SB is already about the same as avoidance at 0 ratings is just not true. 0,789 and 1,01 is not about the same. If you can show me some math that says otherwise or find an error in my calculations please go ahead.

Balance point is indeed a bit tricky since both avoidance and mastery scale exponantial. I think you can make some generalizations though. Before 4500 total ratings avoidance>mastery, between 4500-5000 ratings mastery>avoidance but don't exceed the softcap of 77,4% unhittable, after 5000 ratings mastery>avoidance untill the hardcap of 102,4% unhittable. Don't hold me to the numbers of ratings since they're more guessed then calculated.

*Without shieldblock it takes about 16% dodge/parry before DR before avoidance gets worse then mastery. 16*176,7187*2=5655 ratings. This assumes 0 mastery for comparison which is not realistic. If you would have 1450 ratings for mastery, dodge and parry each the next amount of dodge/parry/mastery would give about the same damage reduction.
*Mastery for paladins reduces damage taken by 2%*40%blockvalue=0,8% damage reduction, mastery for warriors starts at 0,71% and at 8 mastery its 0,81%.
*It gets really interesting when you start looking at dodge procs from windwalk or trinkets and compare dodge to parry and the bonus Hold the Line gives to parry.

I have the feeling we're using different numbers somewhere since your conclusion are so way different. How do you calculate the gain of 1 point mastery wartotem?

[Takethecake]

@Bigbad: Your numbers pretty much match what I've been seeing as well.

Their seems to be a few different views on mastery but from what I've seen is that, from an incoming damage standpoint, mastery is only worth stacking once you are over 5200 combined rating for dodge / parry / mastery. Below 5200, mastery results in increased overall damage taken. At 5200 mastery yields almost no change in damage taken up to the ~76% softcap. Between 5200 and 6000, the scaling differences are all over the board, until around 6000+ when mastery is always better up to unhittable.

[Katzazi]

I have some questions to your graphs:

What are the y-values? Is this the combined percentage of parry and dodge that is equal to mastery rating? If so, do you assume, that both parry and dodge contribute likewise? So diminishing returns are as low as possible?

Is this with or without using SB on CD?

I know that self-healing was reduced, lately. Do you know how much it would contribute to "reduce" the dmg income from mastery?

[Takethecake]

The Y value is overall reduction of incoming damage. This is calculated with shield block up but without Hold the Line up. It's factored with Parry and dodge being equal and scaling down equally as mastery increases in order to maintain the same overall total rating.

So for 6000 total combined rating, the graph shows that stacking mastery can decrease overall incoming damage by almost 1%. But for 5200 total combined rating, the graph shows that stacking mastery can increase overall incoming damage by 0.5%. Lower overall combined values consistently show an increase in overall incoming damage for any value of mastery.

[Katzazi]

Thank you for the explanation.

[Bigbad]

Graphs look nice, they follow my expectations even if some numbers are a bit different from mine.

I included 5% crit block from 50% uptime on hold the line. You would need 10% parry with a 1,5 swing timer from the boss for 50% uptime and 13% with a 2 sec swingtimer. So the 50% seemed like a decent assumption. That would change the 5200 to about 4950 rating at the start.

Looks like you run into the softcap earlier then 77,4% and i saw you comparing damage taken versus same lvl mobs earlier in the thread. If its against boss lvl mobs it will take slightly longer before the value of mastery drops.

The 5400-5600 graphs are the most interesting i think, aiming for the amount of mastery that softcaps you as the perfect setup. Having everything converted into mastery is just not realistic. This might be the gearing strategy for when in itemlvl 359 epics with 5k ratings for avoidance out of the 6k total (including buffs here).

[Takethecake]

Working on updating it for boss level mobs but I have a question, Tanking a boss effectively gives you .6% less chance to block/dodge/parry/miss.. but how does that affect crit block?

[Airowird]

[U]Using http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t29453-c..._85_cataclysm/

1/x' = 1/c + k/x
1/x' = (x+ck)/(cx)
x' = (cx)/(x+ck)
At 176,71899 rating for 1% pre-DR avoidance.

Avoidance gained from AR (=Avoidance Rating)
= 65,63144 * x / (x + 62,74365664)
= 65,63144 * (AR/176,71899) / ((AR/176,71899) + 62,74365664)
= 65,63144 * AR / [176,71899 * ((AR/176,71899) + 62,74365664)]
= 65,63144 * AR / (AR + 176,71899 * 62,74365664)
= 65,63144 * AR / (AR + 11087,9956303275936)

Mastery is 8 + rating(=MR) / 179,28
Base block chance before mastery is 20% for prot spec.
Base crit block chance (with HtL) is 5%

%reduction gained from Mastery with 50% HtL uptime:
= (20% + 1,5% * Mastery) * 30% * (1 + 5% + 1,5% * %Mastery)
= (20% + 12% + 1,5% * MR/179,28) * 30% * (1 + 5% + 12% + 1,5% * MR/179,28)
= (32% + 1,5% * MR/179,28) * 30% * (117% + 1,5% * MR/179,28)
= 11,232 + 0,6705 * MR/179,28 + 0,00675 * (MR/179,28)^2

%reduction gained from Mastery with 50% HtL uptime and SB up:
= (45% + 1,5% * Mastery) * 30% * (1 + 5% + 1,5% * %Mastery)
= (45% + 12% + 1,5% * MR/179,28) * 30% * (1 + 5% + 12% + 1,5% * MR/179,28)
= (57% + 1,5% * MR/179,28) * 30% * (117% + 1,5% * MR/179,28)
= 20,007 + 0,783 * MR/179,28 + 0,00675 * (MR/179,28)^2


Simple deriving gives:
d(dmg_red)/d(AR) = d(65,63144 * AR / (AR + 11088))
= [65,63144 * (AR + 11088) - 65,63144 * AR] / (AR + 11088)^2
= (65,63144 * 11088) / (AR + 11088)^2
= (65,63144 * 11088) / (AR + 11088)^2

d(dmg_red)/d(MR) = d[11,232% + 0,6705% * MR/179,28 + 0,00675% * (MR/179,28)^2]
= 0,6705%/179,28 + 0,00675% * (1/179,28)^2 * MR

d(dmg_red)/d(MR_SB) = d[20,007% + 0,783% * MR/179,28 + 0,00675% * (MR/179,28)^2]
= 0,783%/179,28 + 0,00675% * (1/179,28)^2 * MR

At 0 ratings, they give:
Avoidance: 0,0059191414%
Mastery: 0,00373996%
Mastery with SB: 0,00436747%
Which is indeed less... as long as you're naked and unbuffed (I still had str/agi from the premade gear + raid buffs taken into account apparently).



As for breaking point goes, if we simply assume 1/3 SB uptime, the average MR value becomes:
= 2/3 * [0,6705/179,28 + 0,00675 * (1/179,28)^2 * MR] + 1/3 * [0,783/179,28 + 0,00675 * (1/179,28)^2 * MR]
= 0,708 + 0,00675 * (1/179,28)^2 * MR

Thus, that only has to be equal to AR gain to find the BE-point
(65,63144 * 11088) / (AR + 11088)^2 = 0,708 + 0,00675 * (1/179,28)^2 * MR
(65,63144 * 11088) / (AR + 11088)^2 - 0,708 = 0,00675 * (1/179,28)^2 * MR
179,28^2 / 0,00675 * [(65,63144 * 11088) / (AR + 11088)^2 - 0,708] = MR
MR = 179,28^2 / 0,00675 * [(65,63144 * 11088) / (AR + 11088)^2 - 0,708]
MR = 3.465.174.139.242 / (AR + 11088)^2 - 3.371.267
At 0 Avoidance rating you need -3.343.082 Mastery Rating to be equal (O_o)
Which means I did something wrong somewhere, but I can't figure out what.

[Airowird]

Working on updating it for boss level mobs but I have a question, Tanking a boss effectively gives you .6% less chance to block/dodge/parry/miss.. but how does that affect crit block?

Because of it's 2-roll system, Crit Block is X% of your actual block rate.

Questions for you:
* What is that early peak in your graphs?
* Did you assume that you get equal amount of Dodge & Parry rating?

[Takethecake]

Because of it's 2-roll system, Crit Block is X% of your actual block rate.

Questions for you:
* What is that early peak in your graphs?
* Did you assume that you get equal amount of Dodge & Parry rating?

Crit block isn't based on your actual block rate though, it's based 100% on your mastery. Where as block is based off your base block chance (5%), plus sentinel bonus (15%), plus your mastery. I'm starting to wonder if crit block is reduced based on mob level, due to it's 2 roll system.

The early peaks are the point you reach the softcap you mention. 75% on equal level mobs, 77.4% on these graphs I'm posting below.
And yes I equalized dodge and parry in order to minimize the effect of DR as much as possible. It's meant to give you a good visual of the value of mastery as your overall gear increases, and help people see that it isn't really an optimal stat until you reach a certain point. I can input any value for dodge / parry really.




Here are some values factoring in boss level this time, I completely forgot I hadn't done that. Also threw in Bigbad's recommendation of 5% crit block from Hold the Line.

[Bigbad]

Oh these graphs are perfect

The idea of crit block suppression is interesting, bosses have regular crit supression. Somehow i doubt crit block would be lower on bosses then on regular mobs since it would make balancing different tank classes harder and the 0,6% block reduction already effects the amount of critical blocks. Would need a large sample to prove crit block is lower then shown on the char sheet preferably without hold the line since that just throws an extra factor in the mix.

[Takethecake]

It should be fairly easy to check on low level mobs since it works both ways.

[Eetabeetay]

The Y value is overall reduction of incoming damage. This is calculated with shield block up but without Hold the Line up.

Do you mean that this graph is with shield block up currently, or is it averaged in with the 33% uptime. If its the former, I don't really see how these graphs are all that useful seeing as its only looking at 33% of a fight. If I'm missing something, someone let me know.

[Bigbad]

Its only with 33% shieldblock uptime else the damage reduction would be closer to 60% instead of 50%.

Crit block doesn't get supressed then as koijama did some tests against a lvl 50 mob (first post of the thread) and it didn't show any big deviations from what was shown on the char sheet.

[jere]

Wartotem, I am not sure you can just equalize dodge and parry for this. The equation to convert avoidance based on DR is not linear, so doing:

DR(dodge) + DR(parry) != DR(Dodge+Parry)

You may want to verify that.

Or are you doing the comparison just versus Dodge or just versus Parry? Trying to figure it out a bit.

[Kojiyama]

I doubt Critical Block itself is modified by level of the target, but is impacted by the end result of modifications to your Block% due to the two-roll system.

If you had 15% Critical Block, 30% Block and lose 1% Block fighting a boss, you lose 1/30th of the value of Critical Block due to the reduced chance to roll for it.

If Critical Block was its own combat table entry, something like Crit supression or DR might be in effect, but given the two-roll nature of it, I'm quite certain it's just a simple 1-X roll on any successful Block to determine if it is converted into a Critical Block. Doubt there is anything fancy going on there.