Protection Warriors?

[Tengenstein]

How is it arrogant to suggest that Blizzard, a company that let block value be "brokenly weak" in one expansion, might just let mastery (which at this point is block value for prot warriors) be brokenly weak in another expansion? you say that the cataclysm version of block made armour redundant, why is it arrogant to suggest that maybe, the MoP version of shield block might just make mastery redundant? and Mr.street can say what he likes, any half decent tank in wrath stacked stam stam and more stam. if it wans't a direct effective health increase, it didn't matter mana was nigh infinite, and healers where pumping out Healing at the tank regardless of the incoming tank damage, they didn't care if we parried, or didged, or took a hit full to the face they where still gonna just spam Holy light or its equivalent at us, they healed assuming the worse case scenario and we gemed and enchanted for the worse case scenario, furthermore we had so muchavoidance on gear and where so far into DRs it just wasn't attractive in wrath and in the last tier we had a whole 15% dodge taken away, and parry being on such Harsh DRs meant that stacking either was redundant.

[Aggathon]

I haven't really been keeping up with this thread, but they've said it will be pretty much impossible to hit full CTC come MoP, the paradigm is going to change again because your blocks and mitigation will be more determined by abilities than stats.

If you go back and look at the ICC EHP thread, you'll see the run-time series statistical analysis of incoming hits, I think it was section 6. What matters in that analysis isn't the odds of taking a hit, but rather the odds of taking successive hits in a row at least one time druing a fight. At very low avoidance levels you're pretty much going to get hit a bunch of times im a row no matter what, as you increase avoidance levels they remain irrelevant until about 42% then got exponentially more important up until about 70-80% avoidance, then after that each increase becomes almost as irrelevant as it was until 42%.

With a two roll system, block becomes more complicated to figure out its value, but we also know that it's value decreases with avoidance. Subsequently, block, dodge, and parry will all be pretty much irrelevant in MoP and I imagine the only things we MIGHT have to stack are hit and expertise to some statistically significant extent to generate enough rage for things like shield block and ability use will matter for more for incoming damage (and healer mana) than stats will. Since stats won't matter... STACK YOU SOME STAM SON!

[Dreador]

I haven't really been keeping up with this thread, but they've said it will be pretty much impossible to hit full CTC come MoP, the paradigm is going to change again because your blocks and mitigation will be more determined by abilities than stats.

If you go back and look at the ICC EHP thread, you'll see the run-time series statistical analysis of incoming hits, I think it was section 6. What matters in that analysis isn't the odds of taking a hit, but rather the odds of taking successive hits in a row at least one time druing a fight. At very low avoidance levels you're pretty much going to get hit a bunch of times im a row no matter what, as you increase avoidance levels they remain irrelevant until about 42% then got exponentially more important up until about 70-80% avoidance, then after that each increase becomes almost as irrelevant as it was until 42%.

With a two roll system, block becomes more complicated to figure out its value, but we also know that it's value decreases with avoidance. Subsequently, block, dodge, and parry will all be pretty much irrelevant in MoP and I imagine the only things we MIGHT have to stack are hit and expertise to some statistically significant extent to generate enough rage for things like shield block and ability use will matter for more for incoming damage (and healer mana) than stats will. Since stats won't matter... STACK YOU SOME STAM SON!

Post brought tears to my eyes. Well put, and this might be the second time I've sigged you.

[fengosa]

If you think about it avoidance scales poorly with SB uptime as well. At 0% uptime, you parry/dodge 100% of the damage. At 100% SB uptime you only reduce damage 70% as you would have blocked 30% regardless. It suffers from the exact same problem that mastery does so I'm not certain that block is devalued any more than avoidance.

You also have to account for the fact that 100% SB won't be easily obtainable in early tiers since we have less rating to grab hit/exp from. There's a distinct possibiltiy that the ctc rating you lose from taking threat stats will make for very harsh worst case scenarios when SB is down because you don't have much passive avoidance in that scenario. Now factor in the mana costs associated with taking extra damage and stam becomes unappealing as well.

Taking that all in, you're still going to want to keep an active rotation working because it reduces more damage than you would by not keeping SB up no matter what your ctc stats look like. Even if player skill diminishes the value of ctc rating it still looks like the best stats to me albeit with very rough numbers that I've used so far.

[Gregasaurous]

If you think about it avoidance scales poorly with SB uptime as well. At 0% uptime, you parry/dodge 100% of the damage. At 100% SB uptime you only reduce damage 70% as you would have blocked 30% regardless. It suffers from the exact same problem that mastery does so I'm not certain that block is devalued any more than avoidance.

You also have to account for the fact that 100% SB won't be easily obtainable in early tiers since we have less rating to grab hit/exp from. There's a distinct possibiltiy that the ctc rating you lose from taking threat stats will make for very harsh worst case scenarios when SB is down because you don't have much passive avoidance in that scenario. Now factor in the mana costs associated with taking extra damage and stam becomes unappealing as well.

Taking that all in, you're still going to want to keep an active rotation working because it reduces more damage than you would by not keeping SB up no matter what your ctc stats look like. Even if player skill diminishes the value of ctc rating it still looks like the best stats to me albeit with very rough numbers that I've used so far.

I don't make sense of the first part there.

The second part: If GC holds to his word, we're gonna have hit/exp on our tier sets. And then IF we can't get enough, and SB uptime turns into our "end all/be all" of war tanking, we'll take whatever gear we can get that has hit/exp. And then there's reforging. I think we'll be ok.
You make a interesting point with mana efficiency, i would hope it will be a non issue though. I guess we'll see how healer mana usage turns out when people hit level cap in beta.

Your last statement is contradictory to what history has taught us. When incoming damage becomes something WE can't "efficiently" mitigate on our end, we turn to EHP.

[Bigbad]

Keeping up shieldblock with the T14 4set which makes it 50 rage should be doable. Some napkin math below not sure if the numbers are reasonable for MoP but feels like they should bump up the value of mastery to 2% crit block per point. Stamina is always nice but there is a point where you have "enough".

Assuming 100% shieldblock uptime and 20% crit block (resulting in an average block of 36%) avoidance reduces 64% of the damage on average, add in diminishing returns which will be somewhere around 0,7-0,8 and you get a value around 0,5%.

Assuming 25% avoidance and 1,5% crit block per mastery (0,75*1,5*0,3=0,3375) you get a value of 0,34% damage reduced on average.

[Gregasaurous]

Keeping up shieldblock with the T14 4set which makes it 50 rage should be doable. Some napkin math below not sure if the numbers are reasonable for MoP but feels like they should bump up the value of mastery to 2% crit block per point. Stamina is always nice but there is a point where you have "enough".

Assuming 100% shieldblock uptime and 20% crit block (resulting in an average block of 36%) avoidance reduces 64% of the damage on average, add in diminishing returns which will be somewhere around 0,7-0,8 and you get a value around 0,5%.

Assuming 25% avoidance and 1,5% crit block per mastery (0,75*1,5*0,3=0,3375) you get a value of 0,34% damage reduced on average.

It would appear as though you used commas instead of decimals and it really confused the hell out of me until i realized it was a recurring typo?

[Tengenstein]

It would appear as though you used commas instead of decimals and it really confused the hell out of me until i realized it was a recurring typo?

To be fair Greg both commas and periods are acceptable nomenclature.

[Gregasaurous]

To be fair Greg both commas and periods are acceptable nomenclature.

Fair enough.

[Bigbad]

The dutch use commas Think dots instead is an American thing?

[Zellviren]

How is it arrogant...

It was arrogant because you attempted to completely sideline a perfectly valid opinion that differed from your own. Worse, you chose to do so by snidely boiling said opinion down to a pithy rebuke that relied on obviously bad analogies. The fact you've since shifted tack to a more defensive discussion implies that you're aware of this fact.

...Blizzard, a company that let block value be "brokenly weak" in one expansion, might just let mastery (which at this point is block value for prot warriors) be brokenly weak in another expansion?

Because they've never let it be weak - in fact, they've actively tried to avoid that scenario and went the whole hog in Cataclysm by changing value to a static 30% (outside of mastery modifiers, obviously). You could argue that Anub'arak was the first attempt at making block interesting, but that would be a very tenuous link.

My point is that mastery, the warrior block stat, was deliberately aimed at making block worthwhile. Completely devaluing it doesn't make any sense.

...the MoP version of shield block might just make mastery redundant?

That's against the stated design intent from Greg Street himself.

if it wans't a direct effective health increase, it didn't matter mana was nigh infinite, and healers where pumping out Healing at the tank regardless of the incoming tank damage, they didn't care if we parried, or didged, or took a hit full to the face they where still gonna just spam Holy light or its equivalent at us, they healed assuming the worse case scenario and we gemed and enchanted for the worse case scenario...

With mana no longer being infinite the way it was then, I personally feel this is a bad analogy. With mana mattering in MoP (presumably, of course), particularly at entry level raiding, stacking stamina to the exclusion of all else simply isn't compelling. Additionally, you never know; they might make good on their promise to stop making stamina the only solution to huge nukes.

Making mastery affect Shield Barrier is one such way of doing this.

...furthermore we had so muchavoidance on gear and where so far into DRs it just wasn't attractive in wrath and in the last tier we had a whole 15% dodge taken away, and parry being on such Harsh DRs meant that stacking either was redundant.

We also didn't have reforging or a block model that was worth considering in the majority of content.

Times have changed, and in the case of block, quite dramatically so.

[Tengenstein]

you seem kinda upset. I didn't side line you I asked you if you see the possibility of blizzard letting mastery be a sucky stat, and you said no they wouldn't let that happen. I've provided examples. you can either accept blizzard sometimes doesn't get it right, and that sometimes what Mr.Street says he wants isn't necessarily what ends up happening or you don't. no skin off my back; But if you can't stand to see other people not agree with you, perhaps you should stay off the internet.

Times are changing, i agree, why does that mean the value of mastery can't change for prot?

[Airowird]

Blizzard DID let Block be weak, just look at ICC gear, they know they failed after Anub, simply because the pre-cata block system was not designed to have shield tanks at equal level as Druids & DKs. Hence they moved to Armor in ICC.
They went forward with the 30% in Cata, but they missed the ball on the single table. The current design, with correct numbers ofc, is the best possible option I can think of that is usable for WoW.

As for Mastery value and SB:
If SB will still overflow block into crit block then you see no difference when...
B% * (1 + C%) = 2*C%
With B% = Block chance and C% Crit block chance.
Normally, B% = C% + 13% (3% base, 10% from Bastion), which ends up as...
(13% + C%) * (1 + C%) = 2*C%
C%*C% + 1.13*C% + 13% = 2*C%
C%² - 0.87*C% + 0.13 = 0

C%1 = 19.16%
C%2 = 67.84%

That means that SB devalues Mastery when Block chance is between 32.16% and 80.84% ...
Pretty much the entire expected range of Block chances, but this does not mean Mastery becomes uselss, just that SB reduces it's usefulness. I'll do a more in depth value analysis of MAstery & avoidance stats once I got some lvl 90 scaling numbers.


Edit: To substantiate Teng's point: Mr. Street said that MoP would have stat crunching because they didn't want to make giant ass numbers in the game, it would complicate stuff and make damage less obvious to read. Guess what? It ain't in!

[Zellviren]

you seem kinda upset. I didn't side line you I asked you if you see the possibility of blizzard letting mastery be a sucky stat, and you said no they wouldn't let that happen. I've provided examples. you can either accept blizzard sometimes doesn't get it right, and that sometimes what Mr.Street says he wants isn't necessarily what ends up happening or you don't. no skin off my back; But if you can't stand to see other people not agree with you, perhaps you should stay off the internet.Times are changing, i agree, why does that mean the value of mastery can't change for prot?

I’m not upset with it, just bored. It’s tedious to see Internet cliques that try to shut down discussions because they don’t conform with the ideas of said clique. I get involved in class discussions because I like getting involved in discussions related to my hobby; I’m assuming you do, too. I simply don’t appreciate (or intellectually respect) the provision of demonstrably bad examples in an attempt to ostracise those of differing opinion. Your mileage may vary, of course.

[Zellviren]

Edit: To substantiate Teng's point: Mr. Street said that MoP would have stat crunching because they didn't want to make giant ass numbers in the game, it would complicate stuff and make damage less obvious to read. Guess what? It ain't in!

I don’t wish to discuss this at length right now because, for some reason, my work browser puts all my text into a horrid wall that is painful to read. All I will say at the moment is that you’re wrong; Ghostcrawler never said that the stat crunch would happen in MoP, merely that it could. I know you want to support your pal here, but please don’t start rewriting history as a means of doing so.

[Aggathon]

idk what a stat crunch has to do with any of this, the reasons for a stat crunch are completely irrelevant from a math perspective on tanking. It's just scaling. Stat crunch is all about "feel" and how important gear is, but mainly how important gear is for DPS since DPS don't really have diminishing returns like tanks do.

Heres the deal. Block being a two roll system significantly devalues it, WHICH IS WHAT BLIZZARD WANTS. Blizzard does not want tanks to be able to get to CTC then just sit in front of the computer drooling and/or bashing their heads against the wall and/or letting their cats walk on their keyboards while they go grab another beer. The way to make full CTC literally impossible is to have a small amount of DRs, make 100% block impossible to reach without using abilities, and then throw in a 2 roll system. Stat-flation can't get you passively CTC with this model.

Therefore, what matters in tanking is being able to it stuff to get enough rage to use your mitigation abilities properly to ease healer mana. PURE STATISTICS STATES that at this point stacking avoidance and mitigation stats is statistically irrelevant over the course of an entire fight. What matters is burst-time calculations where the "worst case scenario" happens and you just get trucked in the face. With the ability to use cooldowns such as shield block or shield wall or whatever else blizz might throw our way to use in these situations, we can help mitigate these worst-case scenarios, but the only thing that will keep us alive here for real is EHP. The only reason why EHP hasn't been used in Cata (and the only other time in late TBC and on H-Anub25) is because you could stack avoidance and/or block to a statistically significant amount to decrease the amount healers had to be putting out. With a two roll model, you can't do that. Using your abilities properly is what will save healer mana, not stats.

Mark my words. CTC Ratings (Dodge/Parry/Mastery) will be near irrelevant. Hit/expertise (to some extent, I don't think we'll be stacking to 47 expertise rating, I'd guess 26 expertise 8% hit MAX, probably less more like 5% hit/20 expertise will suffice but we won't know until the ratings/gear/boss mechanics are finalized at max level) then after that go stam. If you're using your abilities properly, then healers should have mana to heal you when stats fails you and you get trucked in the face, as long as you have a big enough EHP buffer for them to respond to it.

[Airowird]

1) Actually, GC said that in order to prevent issues with caps (that are there to prevent overflow issues, such as threat currently in cata), they would either have to implement a "mega damage" solution, or do a stat crunch, because they were better alternatives than redoing the system to fit the big ass numbers in and he even stated that the stat crunch is the most logical solution to their problem. As far as I can tell, they DID change part of the system to allow big numbers, which (for those unfortunate people that have a traffic limit on their internet) means far more traffic generated by the game.
The only reason I can think of for choosing to adapt the system to larger numbers is simply because it takes less time before they can launch MoP, a bad designer choice and one I did not think Greg Street would opt for (or allow without issues) and regardless, it is still "against the stated design intent" as you put it. The point still stands that the actual result and design intent do not always see eye to eye.

2) "Not attractive" does not constitute "useless". Example: While leveling my Rogue in Twilands, I used a Strength Mace, simply because the DPS was attractive. I would certainly have prefered the Strength was something more useful like Hit or Agility, but while it wasn't attractive, it was still useful. Bonus Armor (read: trinkets) in Cata is no longer an attractive option because of the stat weight making it reduce far less damage compared to the ICC days. It is still just as useful as it was before, but because math values other stats far higher, it is no longer attractive. That means that theory crafting defines attractive stats as those with more leverage on the end-goal, relative to other stats.
Pre-Dragon soul, Mastery is very attractive for a Warrior and avoidance is not (while hit/exp is truly almost useless after the threat buff). As it stands now, Mastery will become attractive for Protection Warriors somewhere around hc T14, end of normal T15, even with Shield Block slightly reducing its value. On the other side, Dodge will be more attractive to Guardian Druids than Mastery due do the Savage Defense ability reducing Mastery's value (but not Dodge). In its previous incarnation, SD favoured neither and Dodge and Mastery were both the most attractive defensive stats, but compared to each other, neither was more attractive than the other (the gain of either at any given point was too similar and fluctuating to consider any choice between them meaningful)

3) Also, you accuse members here of shunning different opinions, yet in your post here you call anyone disagreeing with you short-sighted and wrong. Nobody was arrogantly dismissive or insensible but yourself. From a damage reduction PoV, Mastery is still the best stat to do so on a Prot Warrior, followed by Dodge/Parry and Armor. As Armor is not available as a stat on gear, it comes down to mastery vs avoidance, at which point avoidance is NOT attractive, mastery is. Feel free to do the math on that and come back with more than a subjective opinion.

3) Tengenstein is NOT my 'pal'. He may be a fellow theory crafter, but we're not close buddies and certainly don't always agree on things (nothing personal, Teng). I could rant about providing arguments vs accusing politics, but really, just read this again, specificly that last point on Post Content.

[kopcap]

I don’t wish to discuss this at length right now because, for some reason, my work browser puts all my text into a horrid wall that is painful to read. All I will say at the moment is that you’re wrong; Ghostcrawler never said that the stat crunch would happen in MoP, merely that it could. I know you want to support your pal here, but please don’t start rewriting history as a means of doing so.

Man, this clique is evil, I am telling you. Good thing you are on it, we are safe now!

If you go back and look at the ICC EHP thread, you'll see the run-time series statistical analysis of incoming hits, I think it was section 6. What matters in that analysis isn't the odds of taking a hit, but rather the odds of taking successive hits in a row at least one time druing a fight. At very low avoidance levels you're pretty much going to get hit a bunch of times im a row no matter what, as you increase avoidance levels they remain irrelevant until about 42% then got exponentially more important up until about 70-80% avoidance, then after that each increase becomes almost as irrelevant as it was until 42%.

Agga, I had to look at this section because this paragraph looked weird to me. Here are three problems with it just on the surface:

First, avoidance is not an independent stat, it correlates with stam. If you are pushing avoidance up one side of the graph, your EHP is changing too. So is the number of hits needed to bring you down to 0. Difference is very significant, you have to account for this.

Second, we don't deal with percentages, we deal with ratings. Ratings have DR. I don't want to know how much my survivability changes per 1% avoidance, I want to know how much it changes per 100 rating at different values of avoidance. This, combined with the first point, will literally turn your graph on its head and flip it around a few times.

Third, why 5 over 100? 5 consecutive hits on progression without heals won't kill you, they will smack you into the ground and leave a crater the size of Great Canyon on your place. Why 100, why not 250 which is more realistic for a 10 minutes fight? Or why not ~40 which is more realistic in terms of cooldown windows? If you change these numbers, graph will change a lot too.

Anyway, I am not entirely sure what the graph tells us, if it tells anything at all. If I look at avoidance, I prefer doing it from TtL and BT stand points because I can understand what they are describing and their implications. According to them, avoidance has pretty good returns at low levels but not so at 40% plus. Hence why I think that removing avoidance from our gear will be very noticeable and that saying that "as you increase avoidance levels they remain irrelevant until about 42% then got exponentially more important up until about 70-80% avoidance" is extremely misleading.

[Krenian]

Been watching this thread and there are certain individuals that are coming close to getting looked at and smacked for.

Need I remind everyone that name calling or going around and calling people negative terms is subject to disciplinary actions.

Bring the tone down and stop calling each other names and talk civilly. Just because someone doesn't agree with your position, doesn't mean that it gives you 'carte blanche' to call them names.

You've been warned.

[Aggathon]

for the record, Airo and I are talking to kopcap in shoutbox... I think we got it straightened out =D