Prot Warrior - is mastery worth reforging?

[Reev]

A bit out of date, as it still cites Defense as a stat, but:

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...on-Compilation

Avoidance vs. mitigation
Defense, dodge and parry are called avoidance stats, as you avoid the entire effect of the attack. Block is called mitigation, as you mitigate (lessen the effect) of the attack. So for example if you have 20% dodge, 20% parry and 20% block, you have 40% chance to take no damage and 20% to block some of the damage.

I can verify that as long as I've been tanking (around 4-5 years now), Avoidance has been the set of stats that allow you to avoid an attack completely, while mitigation is the set of stats that allow you to reduce your incoming damage partially. Aggathon is correct.

So Avoidance:

Dodge
Parry
Miss

Mitigation:
Armor
Defensive Stance and Equivalents

RNG Mitigation:
Block

[Kazeyonoma]

I can probably dig up, the original warrior compilation guide written by Ciderhelm 5 years ago, the first true guide to tanking (since warriors were the only viable tanks in vanilla) where he specifically lays out mitigation, and avoidance and the theory of effective health. Do you really need me to try to dig through google cache logs of the old wow forums that got deleted by blizzard?

[Ion]

I can't believe that at the end of 2010 we're arguing about what "avoidance" and "mitigation" mean.

If you haven't been following the theorycrafting for the past 6 years, go back and read up...don't come here and think you know better how to define what is being talked about than people who have been doing it since before the game even came out.

[Kazeyonoma]

here's some quick hits from Satrina, another one of the warrior forefathers of tanking, the guides are dated in 2008 but they were moved here from his original site Evilempireguild.org which has become his primary site for his addon SBF. But I can assure you these threads existed at least a year prior to him posting them here, 3+ years in the making:

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?40760-Mitigation
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?41796-Defense
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...urns-Avoidance

namely:

But when I dodge I take no damage, so that really is mitigation!
As noted, that is technically true. The difference between mitigation and avoidance is a pedantic difference, but the big thing is that you can account for mitigation from armour in calculations since it is a constant. The damage you don't take because you dodged, parried or were missed, or because your block value was bigger than the hit, are all based on probability. You can't determine when that reduction is going to happen (and in the case of block you can't always know that your block value will be enough to block a whole hit). Because of that nature, you can't use it in calculations. That's why we separate them in definition because otherwise it gets terribly confusing when trying to show theorycraft, when trying to explain it all to new people - basically everywhere that matters.

Block is funny since it can act as mitigation when your block value is too low to absorb an entire hit, and it can be avoidance when it is. It's always based on probability, so it is not properly counted with your mitigation. These days it is very rarely a complete avoidance of damage, so it is not properly counted with your avoidance. Generally it is a third term when used in theorycrafting.

We generally add a third term to be the all-encompassing one: Mitigation for armour, Avoidance for dodge/parry/miss, and damage reduction when referring to the combination of them, including block.

There's a reason people come here for this kind of information, and not to whatever other place. We have consistent definitions like these because it helps us to describe stuff that can be fairly complex to people in as simple a way as possible.

End of discussion.

[Bigbad]

Fun fact i can hit 100% crit block during shieldblock in preraid gear. It needs a proc from porcelain crab trinket, parry on use from impeteous query, some buffs, mastery food& elixer though. Sitting at 10% dodge 14% parry 51% block 138k hp atm without buffs/procs. Not even taking hold the line into account.

On topic mastery seems the way to go, its smooths out damage and with shieldblock giving more critical block then expected it isn't bad to go over 75% unhittable. My gemming is still a mess i have no clue for how much stamina i should go sitting at 138k hp unbuffed now and will only do 10mans till new year after which we start with 25mans. Any clue how much EH is prefered? 138k seemed more then enough for omnitron 10man.

[Aggathon]

damage smoothing is something I really hadn't thought about. While the name of the game overall is reducing healer mana consumption, and subsequently overhealing, even if avoidance and block are close point for point, I think block would be easier to reduce overhealing with. That's a human error factor that you can't really model.

[leethaxor]

Avoidance will scale about 1% damage reduction per 176.71899 points, and Mastery will scale at .675% (see note) damage reduction per 'rank'. Avoidance requires 176.71899 per 1% so we can assume it will work out to .00565% damage reduction per point. While mastery will be .00796% damage reduction per point (based on 84.74 points per mastery 'rank', aka citation needed)

So provided that boss damage averages out over a infinite duration, mastery appears better then avoidance.. in terms of random events.

So the numbers seem to suggest that mastery is better then avoidance.

Note: how did I arrive at that number, 30% damage lost on a block, 60% damage lost on a crit block, seeing as equal chance of normal or crit means that you have a 45% damage reduction a 'block event' which happen 1.5% of the time per 'rank' of mastery. So you have a 45% damage reduction 1.5% of the time will mean (1.5 * 45 = 67.5).

[Caim]

I have two silly questions here.

1. Is Parry still defined as avoidance? It - 50% of the incoming and next damage.
As the definition of avoidance, It should be 0 damage. Parry seems to be more likely to be a mitigation state now.

2. Sorry, I can't find the information of the critical block. How to calculate the % of the critical block?
If the block is 30% critical block is 20%, the critical block chance is 0.3x0.2 = 6% or straight 20% similar to the hit table below?

Miss 5%
Dodge 10%
Parry 10%
Block 10%
Critical Block 20%
Hit 45%

[Jorge]

1. That was changed in beta. Parry works the same way it always has, i.e. completely avoided damage.
2. It's as your char screen says: You have 30% chance to block. If you block, you have a 20% chance that this block is critcal. It's a two-roll system.

[Caim]

Thanks for clarify above questions, I have left wow about 6 months, so I have to update a lot of basic knowledge.

[Aggathon]

Jorge i think actually critical block and block may have their own separate sections on the hit table so that they only have to do 1 roll of the entire thing.

[Caim]

Edit: though Jorge i think actually critical block and block may have their own separate sections on the hit table so that they only have to do 1 roll of the entire thing.

No, I agree that critical block and block are two roll system. I just compare the effectiveness of critical block against pally holy shield. I calculate both single roll and two roll system. The two roll system's effectiveness is always lower the pally holy shield very little until the mastery rating is in 5500<x<6000. And single roll system's effectiveness is always far better than pally holy shield. Since blizzard want to make both of the warrior and pally tanks balance, there is no reason that to favor the warrior tanks. And the tooltips has also mentioned that it is a chance of blocking, so I think it is right.

[Sakkura]

1. That was changed in beta. Parry works the same way it always has, i.e. completely avoided damage.
2. It's as your char screen says: You have 30% chance to block. If you block, you have a 20% chance that this block is critcal. It's a two-roll system.

1. Well, except parry no longer resets your swing timer. This was the justification for parry and dodge now having completely identical rating conversions and DR formulas/curves.

[Sakkura]

Block is on a two roll system for block/crit block. This is why a lot of people are going dodge/parry into high-DR territory before going mastery. The gain from block just isn't worth it when compared to the gain from dodge/parry pre-DR.

What exactly do you mean by pre-DR? You don't have to gear up to get to 0% dodge/parry, and relying on the avoidance you would have gotten if the game didn't have avoidance DR implemented seems equally absurd.

[Muffin Man]

Let's keep the ball rolling guys.

Am I accurate in summing up the issues wrt to mastery versus pure avoidance being:

Healer mana expenditure:
* does mastery smooth out damage in a way that prevents healers from using their more inefficient heals?
* does mastery prevent overheals?
* does avoidance reduce enough damage overall to save healer mana via casting less heals period.

Bonus question: What point does avoidance + block turn shield block into beastly mini-shield wall (remember any excess block gets converted into critical block, which I abused post 4.0 against Vezax when we were farming some old school achievements).

PS - Next time look at someone's post history before running into the open maw of trolls.

[Kazeyonoma]

Stay on topic, i ended the discussion several posts ago.

[Destruyen]

Bonus question: What point does avoidance + block turn shield block into beastly mini-shield wall (remember any excess block gets converted into critical block, which I abused post 4.0 against Vezax when we were farming some old school achievements).

well 100% dodge + parry + block would be the best way to go but probably not obtainable until full t11. 75% would make shield block a "mini shield wall" to push unhittable to 100% against physical attacks. by unhittable i mean every incoming attack is either dodged, parried, or blocked for 30% decreased damage. but that's what unhittable has always meant so everyone should understand that term....

[gacktt]

Parry and dodge benefit in a way that attacks which inflict debuffs or stuns can be avoided, however if you block it the debuff will still affect you. Block on the other hand is a lot smoother on average since you often proc 30/60% damage reductions as opposed to a much, much less chance of a 100% reduction.

Blocks also give you +15 rage which is great for your damage output.

Mastery+Parry is the best rating for all types of gear for survival, reforge dodge to either one, DR penalty isn't that big until we hit a couple more tiers.

[Sakkura]

Mastery+Parry is the best rating for all types of gear for survival, reforge dodge to either one, DR penalty isn't that big until we hit a couple more tiers.

You must be confusing parry and dodge. You want to be reforging a lot of parry into either dodge or mastery, because DR is a pretty serious penalty even in pre-heroics gear. Like, if you have 10% pre-DR parry it turns into 9% post-DR parry, but if you have 12% pre-DR parry it only converts to 10.5% post-DR parry. Since you get parry from strength you'll almost always have much more parry than dodge before reforging, which means you can reduce your average damage taken quite a bit by reforging to dodge. Or by reforging parry to mastery instead of dodge to mastery. Dodge and parry are almost exactly equal now, only hold the line makes any difference; and you shouldn't be taking a big DR hit just to increase your hold the line uptime.

[Muffin Man]

well 100% dodge + parry + block would be the best way to go but probably not obtainable until full t11. 75% would make shield block a "mini shield wall" to push unhittable to 100% against physical attacks. by unhittable i mean every incoming attack is either dodged, parried, or blocked for 30% decreased damage. but that's what unhittable has always meant so everyone should understand that term....

Ha, I realize how stupid my second question was. In my defense it was late.

I do think there's a sweet spot though. Since to get close to passive unhittability you'd need a lot of master which gives both block and critical block.

So at 75% avoidance + block, shield block turns into mini shield wall, but when you have 100% it's much closer to the real shield wall as you'd probably have numbers like 45% avoidance, 55% block (50% critical) block passively which would convert to 75% critical block.

I haven't started raiding yet, but the mouth of blues said this is take-2 for keeping avoidance levels down across the board; so who knows how gearing will end up.