Mastery for Prot.

[Spiff]

Worth stacking at the cost of the dodge/parry i'd be losing? I was going to try it out, but i'm looking for some other opinions.

Edit: Definitely feeling rage starved in AOE tanking situations, even with reforging to about 43% block via mastery and having shield spec.

[Zaitochi]

I have to agree with you that I've found myself raged starved several times in AoE packs, one of the reasons is that I'm not used to the new delay that Blizz put in so if you spam a Key several times you get it stuck in a Queue..

As for mastery rating I'm still deciding on what stats I should sacrifice for it, it might be parry cause I'm not really sure on Hold the Line as a talent.

[Spiff]

I wasn't very impressed with it, I had around 42% block with all the mastery i had, and didn't seem to make a difference, since I lose about 4% dodge/parry, I just think its better to wait till we have more of a mastery pool to use.

[Sapphidia]

At present it seems the mastery is only worth it at higher levels of mastery - it seems to scale in an ArP-like manner. 40% chance to critically block is going to be a lot more useful when you have 80% block chance than when you have 30%.

That said, initially it does seem very weak, considering it adversely scales with Shield Block. The new beta changes which push the Critical Block part of it higher and reduce the block chance aspect will help it a bit though.

As it stands, I'm going to be gemming for Parry/Stam and Dodge/Stam in my red/yellow sockets (bye bye EH stacking), and will probably reforge as much Dodge into Parry as I can - Parry feels like the signature warrior avoidance ability now due to Hold The Line, so I'll want at least as much parry as dodge, if not more.

Slightly offtopic, but in response to Zaitochi, Hold The Line is a marvellous talent. Maybe not for mitigation hugely, but when you have 2% base crit in your tank gear you'll really thank having a lot of parry that keeps a 10% crit buff with high uptime. If you think of Hold The Line as being a 10% Crit talent for two talent points, it becomes very much worth it. With 20% parry, keeping it up nearly 100% isnt totally out of the question - certainly when tanking 2+ mobs. The 10% critical block is just a nice free bonus.

[MellvarTank]

As it stands, I'm going to be gemming for Parry/Stam and Dodge/Stam in my red/yellow sockets (bye bye EH stacking), and will probably reforge as much Dodge into Parry as I can - Parry feels like the signature warrior avoidance ability now due to Hold The Line, so I'll want at least as much parry as dodge, if not more.

If Parry still holds the same DRs that it had in Wrath, Dodge > Parry. Not to mention the Parry mechanic has changed as far as I recall, so it is no longer 100% avoided hit, it is 50/50 on two hits.... (or did they trash that idea?)

I would not stack parry. Depending on threat issues (which we seem to be having), reforging hit/expertise may be worth it.

[Dragaan]

Remember, parry has an added benefit now with Hold the Line. As for mastery, I decided to put a set together with every piece reforged to mastery. If there was hit or expertise on the piece, i dropped that. If I had to drop avoidance, it was usually dodge. I'm now sitting at ~100% avoidance+block (with ~35% crit block). With every single hit being either 100% avoided or 30/60% reduced, my incoming damage should be very smooth (I hope). Gonna test it out in ICC and on Halion tonight and see how it feels.

[Sifer]

If Parry still holds the same DRs that it had in Wrath, Dodge > Parry. Not to mention the Parry mechanic has changed as far as I recall, so it is no longer 100% avoided hit, it is 50/50 on two hits.... (or did they trash that idea?)

I would not stack parry. Depending on threat issues (which we seem to be having), reforging hit/expertise may be worth it.

I read on the patch notes I think it was that the DR on dodge and parry have been matched.

quoted from the patch notes

Parry - Parry provides the same avoidance as Dodge, and you'll receive a percentage of your strength as Parry Rating.

You now want to try go for which ever is lower when gemming etc so as to avoid as much DR as possible.

Pretty sure your correct with the 50/50 split although i would have to check to be sure.

Even still that takes out some of the spike damage which would mean its easier for healers to heal since it would allow them more time to react and for hots to tick = less overheal.

[Kazeyonoma]

that quote says nothing about how DR is handled.

they both convert the same

44 parry = 1% parry
44 dodge = 1% dodge is all that means

but dodge DR cap is 88%
parry DR cap is 44%
that means, especially with str already pushing your parry rating into the high teens, that when you take 44 parry, you'll likely receive only .56% parry, while 44 dodge will grant you .79% dodge. That's what we're talking about DR curves and parry still inferior to dodge.

[MellvarTank]

Kaze, thanks for that, and you beat me to it.

As for the 50/50, that idea was in fact scrapped. Parry is 100% avoid on 1 hit.

[Zaitochi]

Slightly offtopic, but in response to Zaitochi, Hold The Line is a marvellous talent. Maybe not for mitigation hugely, but when you have 2% base crit in your tank gear you'll really thank having a lot of parry that keeps a 10% crit buff with high uptime. If you think of Hold The Line as being a 10% Crit talent for two talent points, it becomes very much worth it. With 20% parry, keeping it up nearly 100% isnt totally out of the question - certainly when tanking 2+ mobs. The 10% critical block is just a nice free bonus.

Ok with that in considering maybe I will max it out if I respec. I'm using whatever Spec EJ forums has suggested but I might consider dropping 1 point out of shield spec to max out Hold the Line.

Don't think there is much need for mastery rating just yet, but I think it would've been nice if Blizz converted Def rating to Mastery for tanks :P But that would make it too easy to tank now wouldn't it

Gem wise not sure I know that Agi/stam gems are pointless for us now so likely pure avoidance, hybrid or pure stam gems for now.

[mirarant]

that quote says nothing about how DR is handled.

they both convert the same

44 parry = 1% parry
44 dodge = 1% dodge is all that means

but dodge DR cap is 88%
parry DR cap is 44%
that means, especially with str already pushing your parry rating into the high teens, that when you take 44 parry, you'll likely receive only .56% parry, while 44 dodge will grant you .79% dodge. That's what we're talking about DR curves and parry still inferior to dodge.

I am wondering if this is still true. Whitetooth updated his combat ratings thread on EJ with some 4.0.3 values for avoidance dr caps and dodge and parry are now the same. I have not tested whether this is yet in for 4.0.1 though. Perhaps someone else can shed some light on this before I get to test it myself.

[Taith@kil'jaeden]

I am wondering if this is still true. Whitetooth updated his combat ratings thread on EJ with some 4.0.3 values for avoidance dr caps and dodge and parry are now the same. I have not tested whether this is yet in for 4.0.1 though. Perhaps someone else can shed some light on this before I get to test it myself.

Yeah, so because of the EJ thread you will see that 45 parryrating and 45 dodgerating are 1% avoidance now and both DR cap is at 65%... means you should balance dodge and parry so far that they are almost equal every time...

[mirarant]

Yeah, so because of the EJ thread you will see that 45 parryrating and 45 dodgerating are 1% avoidance now and both DR cap is at 65%... means you should balance dodge and parry so far that they are almost equal every time...

Hold the Line talent (was that the name?) should make Parry more valuable.

[klausi]

While reaching 8% hit and removing dodge from my hit table (26 expertise) reforging nets me the following results:

basic:
25.91 dodge
17.83 parry
43.74 combined

reforging dodge to parry
22.21 dodge
22.16 parry
44.31 combined
That's only a net gain of ~ 0.5% avoidance but should increase my hold the line uptime by a lot.

reforging highest stat to mastery
20.23 dodge
17.03 parry
37.26 combined
43.95 block (19.15 mastery rating)

While reducing my avoidance by 6.5-7% i only gain 14% block and 14% critical block chance. After all this looks pretty underwhelming to me considerung 5% less parry -> hold the line uptime (remember it's not only +10% crit but also +10% critical block chance!). Might become interesting with the newest beta update (20% critical block chance instead of 10% and 2.5% instead of 1.25% critical block chance increase per mastery) or if you have serious rage issues in 5 mans (block mastery).

[Bowen]

Remember, parry has an added benefit now with Hold the Line. As for mastery, I decided to put a set together with every piece reforged to mastery. If there was hit or expertise on the piece, i dropped that. If I had to drop avoidance, it was usually dodge. I'm now sitting at ~100% avoidance+block (with ~35% crit block). With every single hit being either 100% avoided or 30/60% reduced, my incoming damage should be very smooth (I hope). Gonna test it out in ICC and on Halion tonight and see how it feels.

Were you concerned with having exp soft capped when doing this, how did this full mastery play out for you in ICC and Halion ?

[Toblerone]

I've reforged everything to parry/expertise now and I'm much happier with the results. Also switched to Blade Ward on weapon over Mongoose, something I completely forgot about since agi doesn't do much now. Threat is less of an issue now because Hold the Line has almost 100% uptime and having around 38 expertise. Overall avoidance in combat was actually gained due to Blade Ward over Mongoose, but ignoring the enchant it didn't change much, maybe slightly less because of DR on parry.

I'm curious to know how the Mastery stacking went though, I never tried it in raid after disliking it so much in Heroics.