[Warrior] Critical Block Mechanics

[Katzazi]

There is no more such thing as block value. It's gone for good. Normal blocks block 30% of a hit, crit blocks block 60% of a hit.

[jere]

I am aware of the change. I was thinking in terms of modifying the 30% value (which would technically still be the same type of thing as block value). Old verbage dies hard. I read what he said as meaning "10% critical block is similar to 10% more block value, but 10% more block value is twice is good". It was a misunderstanding.

[klausi]

Critical block sounds very underwhelming, given that "Each point of Mastery increases your block and critical block chances by 1.25%." goes live.

But: We have 10% block from mastery, additional 15% block from prot specc and roughly 20s per minute guaranteed blocks from shield block (shield mastery decreases cooldown by 30s). So that's two mini shield walls (-30% damage against physical attacks) and a chance to decrease damage (1:10 for each hit, slightly rising when mastery goes up) even further.

Paladin have 16% block from mastery and 15% for 20s after using either inquisition or shield of the righteous. Their only "mini shieldwall" is divine protection, reducing all damage taken for 10s by 20%.

So at least compared to our counterpart it looks okay.

[Katzazi]

The stuff we get independent form mastery points has to be balanced more or less against the stuff other classes get without mastery points. Because everything we get for mastry points is our scaling with gear. It's not ok if one class starts better but does not scale as well with mastery. Or the other way round. So everybody has to get comparable increses from mastery to a comparable basic set of abilities / stats.

Don't compare one to the other.

[Ahti]

Shield Block actually looks terribly balanced against other classes cooldowns at the moment. It's usable twice as often as Barkskin/Divine Protection, but doesn't work against magical damage at all.

All three of these cooldowns are on an extremely short refresh timer, which means they are all going to have high uptime. They will all be your 'go-to' option - against Soul-Reaper type abilities where you get a predictable burst of damage every 15-60s, they will account for the majority of those abilities, and they'll be the first thing to get hit in encounters without that style of burst any time you drop unexpectedly low. In situations without any burst at all, they will provide enormous mana savings, if nothing else.

In light of that, the variance between these abilities seems like a really bad idea for balance. In any fight with a lot of physical burst damage warriors are going to be dramatically better; in any fight with a lot of magical burst, warriors are going to be dramatically worse. I'm okay with tanks being different, but it's to the point where it's not hard to make up an encounter that a warrior could handle easily and a paladin/druid would be extremely hard-pressed to tank, and vice versa.


As far as Critical Block goes, my only concern is that its effectiveness is tied very heavily to your block percentage. 100% Critical Block Chance sounds nice, but if you only block 5% of the time it's not actually that powerful. If you block 90% of the time, it kicks ass. This means that:

1) Critical Block's effectiveness as a mana-saving mastery is going to shift dramatically with how frequently you use Shield Block. That is pretty different from every other tanking mastery in the game currently.

2) Shield Block itself actually gets better as you get more mastery rating. Divine Protection and Barkskin and, well, just about every other tanking cooldown I can think of do not. This means that even if they balance Shield Block at low levels of mastery, it'll probably be too good at high levels of mastery, or vice versa.

I'm not trying to say warriors need a buff. This could easily end up with warriors being hands down the best tanking class. My point is just that I doubt it'll end up being balanced.

[klausi]

It's not balanced now, is it? Ferals outsmart other tanking classes thanks to their insane EH.

Maybe Blizz is trying to hard to have versatile spells and utilities for all purposes so there will always be huge gaps between us. Having a instant heal to full (lay on hands), an additional battleress, spellreflect or anti magic shell all comes handy in different situations.

But well maybe it's to early to try to figure out who might have an upper hand.. or not. Numbers will change during the beta and patches after the release, lvl 84-85 aren't activated for the closed beta yet.

[Katzazi]

The unbalance Ahti described is not one that can be fixed by numbers because it is about some CDs scaling with gear while others do not scale. We will see if this leads to a heavy imbalance between tanks or if it is just one of their differences (for example another class could scale double with the survival part for something else or whatever). Maybe CDs just will be not as important as they were in Wrath or cannot prevent the big hit anyway through whatever mechanic Blizz implements. For example you cannot prevent the Decimate of the little dogs with your CDs - your HP will be reduced to 10% (wherever that is). You can only react with CDs afterwards.

But even while scaling cannot be fixed with setting other numbers, I don't think that Blizz started to balance those CDs. They started to balancee other scaling issues of different classes. But to be able to balance CDs (or the scaling of them) they probably need to set some other numbers.

It's a good thing to point about possible scaling issues of the classes early. I hope Blizz will take such issues with more care than they did at the start of Wrath, where most issues that led to balancing problems later on were discussed by the players in beta. However I doubt that Blizz is at the point to look at them at the moment.

[Kojiyama]

The current implementation of Critical Block is very difficult to balance due to increasing returns and variable interaction with both Shield Block and its own value. Shifting it to a one-roll system would be much more consistent.

[Airowird]

The current implementation of Critical Block is very difficult to balance due to increasing returns and variable interaction with both Shield Block and its own value. Shifting it to a one-roll system would be much more consistent.

You forgot to add Hold The Line, meaning Mastery Ratings will actually scale with Parry Rating. Yeah, so glad they made things easier with removing Defense!! [/sarcasm]

[Eetabeetay]

I don't have access to the official beta forums. Did you get any sort of blue response to your post there? It's been a while since masteries have been implemented and they haven't changed anything afaik.

[Kojiyama]

No blue comments so far on it, sadly.

[Eetabeetay]

Well I reposted your theorycrafting, Koji, on the cataclysm forums in a feeble attempt for some attention from blizz. Also added some of my own parses and really basic calculations. Would really appreciate if someone could hop over there and try to break down those logs a little better than I did. Or maybe you could QQ a lot and pretend to be a complete noob b/c that usually tends to get their attention also.

edit: link to thread - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...50267466&sid=1

[mistersix]

I'm seeing some theorycrafting around our mastery popping up on the official forums.


http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?...BA&hl=en#gid=0

Reactions?

[Kojiyama]

Not surprising. Lack of diminishing returns and a two-roll system that has innate increasing returns compared to avoidance with built-in diminishing returns will lead to stacking Mastery making a lot of sense.

Also, since Block is easily cappable and basically acts like a massive amount of Armor, it is again unsurprising that it would end up being better than Avoidance--after all, Armor-stacking has almost always been a strong approach to take.

The funny thing is that this makes a number of 'DPS' trinkets/rings/etc. better tanking items than tanking items, especially considering that Stamina on most pieces of gear is totally normalized.

This is further emphasized by the fact that Blood Craze procs from Blocked hits but not Avoided hits. And, for that matter, so does Vengeance.

[JollyWarrior]

didn't i read somewhere that strength adds to parry now? Im at work and cant check for myself.

[Kazeyonoma]

25% of str converts to parry rating. 20 str gem gives 5 parry rating also essentially. pretty low.

[swelt]

So the normal block part of mastery seems pretty good, it's the critical block part that's unimpressive? Shield spec + mastery seems to result in lots of rage income...

[mistersix]

Not surprising. Lack of diminishing returns and a two-roll system that has innate increasing returns compared to avoidance with built-in diminishing returns will lead to stacking Mastery making a lot of sense.

Also, since Block is easily cappable and basically acts like a massive amount of Armor, it is again unsurprising that it would end up being better than Avoidance--after all, Armor-stacking has almost always been a strong approach to take.

The funny thing is that this makes a number of 'DPS' trinkets/rings/etc. better tanking items than tanking items, especially considering that Stamina on most pieces of gear is totally normalized.

This is further emphasized by the fact that Blood Craze procs from Blocked hits but not Avoided hits. And, for that matter, so does Vengeance.

Speaking of armor....

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/27303...e-intentional/

[Kojiyama]

So the normal block part of mastery seems pretty good, it's the critical block part that's unimpressive? Shield spec + mastery seems to result in lots of rage income...

Indeed. I tried to point out on the beta forums that Shield Spec was pretty overpowered, but GC didn't seem to agree.

[ironsides]

In terms of block vs parry/dodge atm I am quite set upon stacking mastery. Dodge and parry will result in less damage taken but the higher avoidance percentage given by block results in much less health spikes. You will still spike, and the spikes will be the same either way, but id take the odds of 2 full hits and like 9 blocks 9 dodge/parry over 3 full hits and 6 blocks and 11 dodge/parry anyday (average of 20 hits) they aren't exact numbers but they get the point across. Of course it's still rng but it puts the numbers in your favor to not have those unmitigated hits allign together. Tanks die during spike damage, worst case scenarios shall we saw, that's the basis of EH. Block might not improve the worst case scenarios but it definetly makes them occur less often. You might take more damage in the end(as it currently stands) but I feel your health will dip less often and until healer mana becomes an issue or some such, I will stick with my block stacking.

Idk if anybody agrees with my pov or if it makes sense to everyone but I felt I should still state it. Of course it has little to do with critical blocking portion of the skill and I agree in that regard critical block is like a small bonus atm to what block does for us. Underwelming indeed.