Block-capping, unfortunate future.

[Falkman]

This just in from MMO-champion, from a new beta build:

Protection
* Mastery: Divine Bulwark now increases your chance to block melee attacks by 24%, up from 16%. Each point of Mastery increases block chance by an additional 3%, up from 2%.

[PsiVen]

Woah. I sense heavy DR accompanying that change, and quite possibly removing Holy Shield from the game.

[Rhiannon]

Warriors got their mastery buffed as well:

•Mastery: Critical Block now increases your chance to critically block by 20%, up from 10%. Each point of mastery now increases your block chance by an additional 1.25% and your critical block chance by an additional 2.5% (Up from 1.25%).

Interesting to see where they're going with this.

[Daraxis]

Yeah, my assumption is that they've just rolled Holy Shield into the mastery, since we were all bitching about making it passive.

Good change, if that's the case. Boring mastery is still boring though.

[Worldie]

Uhm, there may be the chance that they actually want us block capped.
Maybe they are planning to balance us (and warriors?) around that 30% damage reduction.

[Steve]

DK/Druid mastery was dramatically better point for point than warrior/paladin mastery before this change.

This change evens things up a bit. The problem is if mastery as a stat is going to be superior mitigation to dodge/parry, capping mastery then becomes a gear scaling issue, at least in the case of paladins. Druids/DKs/Warriors can continue to stack mastery while the paladins will be stuck with stacking less powerful damage reducing stats like dodge and parry.

This bodes ill.

[steadypal]

it felt like my 80 on beta had more BR than my pally on live did today even with this change they said they put in,,, hrm....

[Dhalphir]

thats because the mastery change is to the latest beta build, not the 4.0.1 deployed patch that went live.

[ginga-uk]

Warriors got their mastery buffed as well:

•Mastery: Critical Block now increases your chance to critically block by 20%, up from 10%. Each point of mastery now increases your block chance by an additional 1.25% and your critical block chance by an additional 2.5% (Up from 1.25%).

Interesting to see where they're going with this.

So warriors get more critical blocks, but their block % wasn't buffed. It looks like we are going back to blocking more often (block capped perhaps), warriors blocking less often, but when they do with a good chance they block for more, Druids and DK's don't block they just avoid more.

At the start of wrath we block capped, then dropped block for other stats (mostly stam) as Ulduar bosses hit significantly harder. This time perhaps we'll block cap quite easily in the first tier, and then trade in excess block (mastery) for other stats (dodgy/parry are the easy reforge options), but also stam no doubt in encahnts, gems etc.

[Passionario]

Druids and DK's don't block they just avoid more.

Or, rather, they absorb more (via Savage Defense/Blood Shield) as they stack mastery.

[degre]

Looks to me like we're the only ones that we'll start dropping mastery instead of stacking it...

[Candiru]

They could always change our mastery to be X% block chance + X% blockvalue. Then we could cap mastery completely at the same time as warriors with a +100% blockvalue when they have 100%Critblock chance. We would both then always block for 60% reduction.

The current scaling means we can only get 20? mastery if we have no avoidance at all. In practise its going to be less than that. That doesn't sound like very much. Won't all paladin tanks be block capped pretty much making it a worthless stat?

[Sabindeus]

So warriors get more critical blocks, but their block % wasn't buffed.

actually their block % WAS buffed

[ginga-uk]

So warriors get more critical blocks, but their block % wasn't buffed.

actually their block % WAS buffed

Ah. I was referring to the scaling factor, which I thought was 1.25% both before and after the change. Their chance to crit block scales faster though.

[Sabindeus]

So warriors get more critical blocks, but their block % wasn't buffed.

actually their block % WAS buffed

Ah. I was referring to the scaling factor, which I thought was 1.25% both before and after the change. Their chance to crit block scales faster though.

huh you're right. never mind.