[Warrior] Critical Block Mechanics

[Eetabeetay]

I was thinking about how exactly I would use these equations to optimize my gear and it seems like we need a better way to go about that than finding the break even point. The break even point is good to look at if you are going to balance with gems, but ideally you would balance as much as possible with reforging before going to gems so that you can use as many stam gems as possible.

Im no theorycrafting wiz, so someone tell me if this is wrong.

Steps in balancing your ratings:
1. Maximize the damage reduction formula as a function of AR and MR. Use the equation AR = TR - MR to replace AR in the formula so you can take the derivative, where TR is Total Ratings (MR + AR).
2. Once you get the optimal ratings, try to reforge as close as possible to those.
3. After you have reforged as much as possible, take your current higher rating (MR or AR) and plug it into the break even equation, then gem as much as possible to get close to that value.

[Airowird]

Or ....
1) Equip base gear
2) Gem according to what you need most
3) Re-check and reforge stats where needed
4) Profit!!! (once you actually manage to kill a boss)

[Eetabeetay]

Well the problem with that is that you are gemming first, when you should save it for last so that you can gem as much stam as possible instead of using more of your gem slots to try to balance ratings. Also, when you reforge, both your AR and MR change so every time you reforge you would have a new break even point unless you are using hit/exp to reforge, but I don't think you will have a lot of that to play around with.

[Katzazi]

If stam is completly better than everything else you would gem for stam anyway.
If stam does not as good so it is better to gem accoringly to gem color (that's what most think would be the case: so stam/something else in red or yellow) you have answerd the gems, too, before you start reforging.

Only if you are very close to a cap it may be better to reforge first and fine tune with gems later.

[Knighterrant81]

Katzazi

If stam is completly better than everything else you would gem for stam anyway.
If stam does not as good so it is better to gem accoringly to gem color (that's what most think would be the case: so stam/something else in red or yellow) you have answerd the gems, too, before you start reforging.

Only if you are very close to a cap it may be better to reforge first and fine tune with gems later.

Stam is without a doubt better when it comes to magic damage, which is where a lot of the burst/chance to die comes from your average boss mob.

Stam is most likely still better in general too, but that remains to be seen.

I for one am going to definitely be landing in the "get other stats from reforging, then gem as much stamina as you can" camp.

[Airowird]

That is pointless, you can not get Stamina from reforging and your avoidance stats do not greatly influence your need for Stamina.
Therefor, you might as well just gem all the stamina you want, at which point you already have all the avoidance ratings on your gear you can have. Only thing left to do then is to optimize within that number of stats.

[Eetabeetay]

I agree wartotem, I was just thinking along the lines that if I'm just a few rating off, or I need to choose between a stam/dodge or a stam/mastery gem.

Still, maximizing the DR function will give me a more concrete goal to shoot for, and make sure that I dont go past the break even point with reforging.
Anyone actually have the DR equation I'm looking for? All I've seen are the two break even equations.

[swelt]

Or ....
1) Equip base gear
2) Gem according to what you need most
3) Re-check and reforge stats where needed
4) Profit!!! (once you actually manage to kill a boss)

It would be really helpful to develop some rules of thumb to help people know "what you need most". Distil some of this rather complex math into some broad targets: e.g. shoot for x% dodge and parry before worrying too much about mastery, after y% dodge/parry stack mastery, etc. In a few weeks time, this forum will be full of people asking these kinds of questions. A bluffers guide with some broad advice would be really helpful.

[swelt]

Or ....
1) Equip base gear
2) Gem according to what you need most
3) Re-check and reforge stats where needed
4) Profit!!! (once you actually manage to kill a boss)

It would be really helpful to develop some rules of thumb to help people know "what you need most". Distil some of this rather complex math into some broad targets: e.g. shoot for x% dodge and parry before worrying too much about mastery, after y% dodge/parry stack mastery, match your socket bonuses etc. In a few weeks time, this forum will be full of people asking these kinds of questions. A bluffers guide with some broad advice would be really helpful.

[Kojiyama]

Once I have Rawr fully up-to-date (it's very close with my commits over the weekend, we are just waiting for the new gear to be imported) it should make figuring out these cross-over points dynamically quite easy--especially as Rawr now has support for optimizing reforging.

On a related note, with the loss of Defense (which was extremely efficient) combined with the increased Stamina to Health gains at 85, there is really no argument of Stamina vs. Avoidance gemmings anymore. Stamina is massively better from everything I can see, even with a Burst Time model that would have previously given a window to hybrid gemmings in Wrath.

(It's possible at high levels of Mastery, it could open up a window for competing for the value of socket bonuses, but at current gear levels it seems pretty hard to match the value of Stamina at 85.)

However, there is going to be room for various optimizations in regard to reforging one rating into another. This is likely to be a lot more variable, which is why I will most likely just use Rawr for this as it's good for that type of gear-based decision-making.

[swelt]

On a related note, with the loss of Defense (which was extremely efficient) combined with the increased Stamina to Health gains at 85, there is really no argument of Stamina vs. Avoidance gemmings anymore.

Healer mana consumption would be the argument. I'm not making it, I'm just saying that while you are focussing on various survival measures/models, the argument for avoidance will come along the 'mana sponge' line.

[Kojiyama]

While some could make that argument, I'm not sure how valid it is with the current healing model.

Probably content for another thread, but one could easily argue that by normalizing the rate at which you take damage you are going to save healers mana, even if they have to heal you slightly more. The reason for this being that using their fast and large heals are less efficient than their slow/small spam heal. If they can regularly assume you will not spike die (e.g. emphasizing a Burst Time-esque model) they can have more confidence in spamming their efficient heal and not need to use their inefficient ones. (Provided you don't have such an unbalanced set of stats that you need insane healing--but Burst Time tends to prevent that as well.)

May make another topic on this.

[Eetabeetay]

Once I have Rawr fully up-to-date (it's very close with my commits over the weekend, we are just waiting for the new gear to be imported) it should make figuring out these cross-over points dynamically quite easy--especially as Rawr now has support for optimizing reforging.

OMG I was starting to worry that I was going to actually have to do math. Which version of rawr are you making it for? I heard Rawr2 isnt being updated anymore, I haven't heard anything about Rawr4, and I really don't like Rawr3.

[Kojiyama]

Rawr4 has all the modern updates, which means just the Silverlight (web) version for now with the WPF (app) version coming along after that is all stable with Cataclysm. (I'm not a massive fan of the Silverlight version myself, but it does work at the very least!)

[Airowird]

It would be really helpful to develop some rules of thumb to help people know "what you need most". Distil some of this rather complex math into some broad targets: e.g. shoot for x% dodge and parry before worrying too much about mastery, after y% dodge/parry stack mastery, match your socket bonuses etc. In a few weeks time, this forum will be full of people asking these kinds of questions. A bluffers guide with some broad advice would be really helpful.

The break-even points are VERY dependant on the amount of ratings you have, so that is very hard.

But as a rough guide, after ~2000 rating on each dodge & parry, you should focus on mastery untill unhittable cap.

[Bigbad]

I noticed something curious today. The buff you get from shieldblock states the amount of block and crit block that is increased. I checked a few numbers and the results are interesting if the tooltip is correct.
Looks like shieldblock gives 25% block + (parry+dodge+block+miss-50)% crit block

Unhittable crit block increase
72% 22%
75% 25%
82% 32%
99,9% 49%
103% 53%

[Stengel]

Nice find. I just checked with different sets of gear and it's true.

At 95.18% avoidance+block, the tooltip says increases critical block chance by 45%.
At 88.29% avoidance+block, the tooltip says 38%.
At 83.99% avoidance+block, the tooltip says 34%.


Now the question is: is this intended?

[Karih]

Now the question is: is this intended?

I'm pretty sure I remember a blue at some point announcing that Shield Block would roll over in that way because otherwise warrior mastery would really be bad for the usefulness of Shield Block.

[Stengel]

I'm pretty sure I remember a blue at some point announcing that Shield Block would roll over in that way because otherwise warrior mastery would really be bad for the usefulness of Shield Block.

Yes there was blue post but no specifics. The Shield Block ability tooltip says it increases block chance by 25% and critical block chance by the excess of that. So everyone was expecting this to mean that Shield Block would add 25% critical block at most.

But the shield block buff tooltip is showing values twice as much as you would expect.

It seems reasonable enough at first glance, but I don't want to get too excited.

[mistersix]

@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.

We're going to need some sort of ingame version of Rawr or tankpoints to take this into account aren't we? Jeez.