Block Changes and Diminishing Returns

[Pagezero]

I have done some testing on the MoP beta to look at diminishing returns on Block, here is what I have found so far on my 85 Warrior:

• Block on the Character sheet is currently bugged, when you first bring it up it shows non-DR values, doing just about anything changes the value to the DR values, for example changing stances or using Shield Block.
  
• Base chance to block for at least warriors seems to have changed from 5% to 3% or Bastion of Defense only adds 13% now instead of 15%, I have not tried unspecing and looking at base block, either way as a Prot Warrior base lock is now 18% down from 20%.
  
• The base 8 Mastery from specing Prot is effected by DR.
  
• Whitetooth's Avoidance DR formula works for Block DR with a Cap of 135.1. The formula is:
  
  

  Block DR = 1 / (1 / 135.1 + 0.956 / Block)

  Block is based on Mastery so it turns out to be the following for Warriors:
  
  

  Block DR = 1 / (1 / 135.1 + 0.956 / (Mastery * 1.5))

  This is just Block from Mastery, to get the full Block you need to add the base 18% from above, the full Block for Warriors would be:
  
  

  Block = 3 + 15 + 1 / (1 / 135.1 + 0.956 / (Mastery * 1.5))

Currently on 4.3.3 I have 62.65% block without a range weapon because it will be gone in MoP, the bugged initial Character Sheet shows my block at 60.65% which is showing the lose of 2% base block. Once I get the sheet to update correctly or use the above formula my Block drops to 51.54%. About a 9% drop does not seem so bad, but remember Block is now a second roll so you can not compare the 51.54% to what we see in 4.3.3, this 51.54% is your chance to block for the second roll. To try to make it clearer, lets say I have 30% Avoidance (Miss + Dodge + Parry), which is probably on the high side (more on this later), this means I have 70% to be hit or block, the 51.54% * 70% is my chance to block which comes out to 36.08%. To sum it up it turns out to be 30% Avoidance, 36.08% to block, 33.92% to be hit, and I am CTC on 4.3.3.

We will have to see how things get tuned and it could be different at level 90 and based on the encounters but as it stand right now Mastery has dropped from very strong on live to weak, maybe even below hit and exp because we need to hit now to generate rage to use abilities like Shield Block and Shield Barrier.

I recommend reading Theck's blog on Blocking, he explains the new Block changes far better than I can.

I have not looked in to it much but Dodge on the beta has dropped in half for all the tanks, Druids are dropping from 40-50% to 25%, my warrior has dropped from around 15% to 7%. All I have noticed so far is naked I am at 0% dodge instead of the base 5% in 4.3.3. Parry seems about the same as 4.3.3.

[fengosa]

One other thing to remember is that mastery has an active component, mainly from

enrage - critical strikes with special abilites and critical blocks enrage you, increasing rage generation by 25%

This makes mastery a resource generating ability on top of mitigating damage. Avoidance may be better at reducing damage passively but mastery should scale better with player skill. Since shield block also produces a finite amount of guarantees block we're going to have to assume a default boss swing timer to compare avoidance with mastery as well as figuring out how much crit block mastery gives.

[Airowird]

The Enrage uptime seems to be rather minimalistic. It only lasts 6 seconds, you will barely crit as protection and especially as starting tank, you'll see far too few crit blocks for it to be reliable.

[Sludgehamer]

I wanted to take a minute to discuss the change their making to block in Mop. Now how the combat table works now is that miss, dodge, parry, block, and hit are on a table. When something melee swings at you the server will roll a dice and get a number between .01 and 100. So block cap is very easy to obtain now at the moment. Now in Mop how it works is that miss, dodge, parry, and hit are on the first combat table. The second table have full hit and block. Miss, parry, and dodge work all the same and if they are rolled the server will skip the second combat table. If hit is rolled the server will look at the second table and roll again. You have a chance to block or take a full hit. Now this makes it so you would have to have 100% block to be ctc caped. Blizzard already stated that the only situation in where you will be ctc caped is where you have 2 heavy mastery procing trinkets proc at the same time. Their also adding dr to block. At the moment block gets more valuable as the more you get of it. In Mop block will have the same value all the time. Aka it won't get worse and there is a curve. They could have fixed this with just lowering the amount of block you get and stayed on one table and the same effect would have happened. I also made a video over the block change at youtube.com/watch?v=GErnu2ZENxo

What do you guys think of the change? Do you like it, or not? I personally don't like it.

[leethaxor]

Now in Mop how it works is that miss, dodge, parry, and hit are on the first combat table. The second table have full hit and block. Miss, parry, and dodge work all the same and if they are rolled the server will skip the second combat table. If hit is rolled the server will look at the second table and roll again. You have a chance to block or take a full hit.

Not really the best way to think of it is both rolls happen. You can parry AND block, even parry AND block AND crit block. But see you are mitigating 60% of nothing, so it ends up being nothing. (Short Circuit Combat Tables Reference)

Their also adding dr to block. At the moment block gets more valuable as the more you get of it. In Mop block will have the same value all the time.

No, No, No!
See block doesn't get more valuable as you get more of it (until you are finishing out the last 10-15% I believe without looking at a graph but basing it on other capping stats). You measure the value of stat in damage mitigated per point of stat (across and infinitaly long boss fight with a standard distribution of boss swings Reference).
So this means that mastery will mitigation X damage for every 1 point of mastery no matter what. It has a direct ratio relating its worth not a curve.
See a stat like parry or dodge does not have a 1:1 ration its ratio decreases as you get more. When you have 500 parry it will mitigate X amount of damage, but when you have 1000 it will mitigation Y. But x/500 and y/1000 won't be the same value. The amount of damage each point of parry or dodge mitigates per point is less for each additional point you stack (after around 7.5% actually since before that value the DR curve works in reverse and actually buffs your parry/dodge giving you more).

Aka it won't get worse.

The fact that it isn't a negative slope doesn't mean that its a positive one it could be flat like I just demonstrated.

---

What do you guys think of the change? Do you like it, or not? I personally don't like it.

I hate it.
Why?
They are forcing us to return to an EHP model of tanking where tanks only stack armor and stam so that they can survive X number of hits before dying and mitigating a maximum amount of damage over time. Agg already wrote a wonder write about this some years ago (damn really?). But the main problem with this is that was then this was now, or the future. In MoP healer's have limited mana pools a.k.a. you can't stack a stat to give you a bigger mana pool which imply's that to heal an EHP take a healer will need to regen at the rate to cover an EHP tank's massive need for healer. Which just simply won't work in the first few tiers I foresee.

So then we get site traffic since nobody will know what to do.

[Bigbad]

Mastery does get better the more you have, since block gets better the more crit block you have and crit block gets better the more block you have. Since avoidance has DR mastery gets relatively better the more avoidance you have as well. Even as paladin where mastery has a more static value, it increases relative to the damage taken. That's where DR comes in with MoP mastery should have the same value relative to the total damage taken, in other words mastery should always reduce your damage taken by X% regardless of the amount of mastery you have.

[Fetzie]

in other words mastery should always reduce your damage taken by X% regardless of the amount of mastery you have.

But with block it isn't a guaranteed damage reduction! According to GC we should almost never be at a point at which we can rely on a block (other than after using ShoR). This makes block an unreliable source of mitigation because there is a decent chance that mastery for paladins and warriors will not be there to mitigate that hit that kills you with less than 20% of the damage as overkill. Tanks don't like unreliable. Unreliable means we go for other stuff that is reliable. Druid and DK masteries are reliable. They are always there. There are always being effective.

At least right now it looks like DR on mastery hasn't been implemented. But we are still going to need the equivalent of around 8000/12000 mastery rating (paladin/warrior respectively) at today's conversion rate to block cap.

Not only is it not fun being a tank that might take a boatload of damage next swing, it is even less fun having to heal a tank that is like that. Remember all the QQ about DK tanks in firelands being too squishy compared to the other tanks? You'll see it again, only with paladins and warriors being the squishy ones.

As much as I hate it, tank mechanics inevitably need to be homogenized. It is so obvious when a tank is out of line, much more so than a healer or a dps. If a boss is slaughtering your main raid's warrior/paladin tanking team and hardly touching the alt group's druid/dk tanking team, what do you do as a raid leader? Force the tanks to change class? What if the alt team tanks aren't the players that tank in the main raid? Do you simply try to muscle through in the hopes that nerfs will come eventually? It took 13 weeks and 3 stacks of the 5% debuff in DS to make warriors and paladins take the same amount of damage as a druid or DK from Focused Assault.

[Bigbad]

I have a feeling that with the block changes they're planning in MoP most special attacks will be blockable to prevent issues like with focused assault. It seems intentional that tanks are a little more squisher then they are now with block being just as unreliable as avoidance is now, proper use of shieldblock/ShoR will be needed to be a stable tank just like dks need proper use of DS now. Just hope they get the balance right cause right now its pretty crappy.

[Wooji]

Druid and DK masteries are reliable. They are always there. There are always being effective.

This is what makes the new block model wierd for me. They removed the unreliable Druid mastery and gave us a always "on" mastery and then they change block for warriors and paladins to be unreliable.

having a reliable mastery for some tank classes and a some what random mastery for others will create balance issues. The unreliability of the druid Cataclysm mastery compared to warriors/paladins is one of the reasons for druid tanks getting buffed in evert patch in Cata, and it seems like they are going to create the same problem again in MoP but for the block classes instead...

[Fetzie]

What would be so bad about making paladins and warriors block cap, as well as providing similar masteries for druids and deathknights, and making special abilities reduced by both blocking and the other masteries?

[leethaxor]

Homogenization between classes is only needed when you design stupid mechanics like focused assault. Then automatically classes like DK's and Druids more EHP style tanks will survive better.

While not having been in beta myself paladin's self healing seems like it will be massive in an EHP world.

[Pagezero]

At least right now it looks like DR on mastery hasn't been implemented. But we are still going to need the equivalent of around 8000/12000 mastery rating (paladin/warrior respectively) at today's conversion rate to block cap.

Mastery doesn't have DR, but currently the Block % you get from it does have DR on the beta, at least for Warriors, the problem is the char sheet is bugged right now and initially shows the non-DR value, if you change stances or use Shield Block it updates to the DR value.

[Takethecake]

Yeah the fact that they changed the druid mastery because it was unreliable, but at the same time "fix" the warrior and paladin masteries and make them extremely unreliable just doesn't make sence. From the little that I have played my warrior on beta I'm really not enjoying having to spam shield block as their idea of active tanking model.

I hope something major changes soon too because the longer this mechanic stays like this the more likely it will roll out in MoP release, and that's what worries me most.

I was kind of excited when they innitially talked about active mitigation for tanks last summer, but so many things in this new mechanic just seems like a cop-out to me.

Another thing I'm confused by:
Druids - Passive 25% magic reduction
Warriors - Sacrafice using shield block to gain 25% magic reduction
Paladins - 40% magic reduction for 10 seconds with 1 min cooldown
DK's - Their mastery works with magic damage and they have anti-magic sheild

[Pagezero]

I like how rage part of active mitigation is being done and valuing hit and exp, but Shield Block/Spell Barrier vs Heroic Strike/Cleave doesn't feel right. I like that Shield Block/Spell Barrier do not have cooldowns, that can make for interesting play but Shield Block feels weak and we are getting close to the BC spamming, in BC we spammed every 5 sec, now it's going to be about every 8-10 sec if you don't use rage for anything else.

At think point I think they should just remove Heroic Strike and Cleave (buff other things to make up for the damage loss), change the warrior GCD to 1.0 sec make it feel faster paced and make rage simply a resource for defensive abilities.

I don't see how they can balance DK's powerful Deathstrike heal+absorb which works for any type of damage with the Mastery/short CDs of the other 3 tanks.

[Airowird]

Did some Maple calculations with the new Dodge/Parry rating to % ratios as well as update some Block mechanic stuff...
So far, it seems the Paladin Mastery will provide the least amount of damage reduction, especially at higher levels of gear.

<<Fixed for correct Block DR>>
Assuming you can keep up your Shield Block enough to average an additional ~20% block chance (including the guaranteed one), Warriors seem in a pretty decent place. Druids start ok-ish, but will start to lag behind at endgame (assuming 32k -> 42k armor increase over the expansion). DKs start out just behind Druids but easily pass Warriors at high Mastery levels, even if you count ONLY the shield, not the healing. Paladins start above DK/Druid, but seem to lose out even to Druids once the DR on Block starts to kick in heavily.

Overall:
If they fix crit block to be a static 40% chance, I think they got Warriors sorted out on the numbers game, although the "active" mitigation mechanics seem kinda boring (replace your current HS bar with Shield Block and Cleave Bar with Shield Barrier macros, there ya go!).
Paladins need to have something to boost their high end block chance more to remain competitive (a Redoubt mechanics where getting full hit = +%block for X seconds perhaps? Or maybe just static 40% block value but only ~1.75 block per mastery?)
DKs are destined to be FotM for endgame tanking, simply because their Mastery is currently the only one without DR.
Druids are going to have issues with the DR on Armor due to the way it works, it doesn't make sense to replace the old Mastery with one that works constantly, but depends more on your ilvl than on your Mastery Rating. Savage Defense is also a weird ability as it basicly provides guaranteed and beefed up block chance while it's up, but nothing while it's not. I would preferably see the Mastery changed into a "X% of a melee hit turned into absorb, Y% of it will heal you over Z seconds" with Savage Defense increasing the effects here.

Edit: Seems I mistyped some numbers in the block DR stuff, gotta fix that first...
Fixed now, apparently granted ~10% extra block chance from the DR formula, conclusions updated to relate to correct numbers

[Bigbad]

Interesting comparison sounds like they'll be changing druids every patch again. Druids might loose a bit of value because its so reliable, high amount of armor/EH might easily get OP on some encounters.

[Leucifer]

Thing is.... all of this seems in line with the "more active tanking" style espoused by Blizzard.

Less reliance on getting to certain numbers/stats to maximize effectiveness.

More emphasis on these things simply enhancing survival, making the tank's job a little easier. Giving breathing room for error.

[Oratory]

Thing is.... all of this seems in line with the "more active tanking" style espoused by Blizzard.

Less reliance on getting to certain numbers/stats to maximize effectiveness.

I wonder where hit/expertise will land with this model. Missing a couple Shield Slams in a row for example will significantly hurt our rage generation (or holy power/chi/etc) and limit Shield Block from being used.

I think we'll definetly want *some* (which is what Blizzard wants) but will we be looking to cap this this in favor of adding more mastery or avoidance?

[Airowird]

Fixed some DR numbers for Paladins & Warriors, Warriors seem more blaanced now, but Paladins are apparently going to be needing buffs each patch to overcome block DR.

[Leucifer]

I wonder where hit/expertise will land with this model. Missing a couple Shield Slams in a row for example will significantly hurt our rage generation (or holy power/chi) and limit Shield Block from being used.

I think we'll definetly want *some* (which is what Blizzard wants) but will we be looking to cap this this in favor of adding more mastery or avoidance?

Wish I had answers. That's also assuming that hit/expertise will function the same way as it always has. Or that rage will function exactly the same. I have a funny feeling that Blizzard is trying to push away from the idea of "capping". That there will be some magic number where your class will function at peak efficiency.

(Side note: And I think the side effect of that will be that theorycrafters will come up with "ideals" for each of the stats.... being an optimized mix of all of the various stats given available gear in content. Think.... combination BiS list meets "effective balance" of stats on those. Again.... this is just my opinion, a guess based off of what I think is the logical direction this is going.)