Block-capping, unfortunate future.

[twinkfist]

well, i'm making a shield spike...to heck with it...i'm only running heroics anyways till cata launch.

[Klaudandus]

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.

Could that mean getting rid of HoPow for protection? Yay~?

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.

Only sad part is that ours is useless for magic, whereas DK and Druid works for all damage income and not just physical. Still, interesting, as in lolwut, if that's Blizz intention.

[Noradin]

Maybe it is time to start blocking magic damage as we do elemntal attacks?

[Darielle]

Only sad part is that ours is useless for magic, whereas DK and Druid works for all damage income and not just physical. Still, interesting, as in lolwut, if that's Blizz intention.

Savage Defense and Blood Absorb thingy both only affect physical damage.

That said, the strength of the Blood Shield is affected by magical damage taken in the last 5 seconds as well, but that absorb will only then work against physical damage.

[Noradin]

Only sad part is that ours is useless for magic, whereas DK and Druid works for all damage income and not just physical. Still, interesting, as in lolwut, if that's Blizz intention.

Savage Defense and Blood Absorb thingy both only affect physical damage.

That said, the strength of the Blood Shield is affected by magical damage taken in the last 5 seconds as well, but that absorb will only then work against physical damage.

Ah ok.

[Solitatis]

I dont know what all this talk is about regemming. With reforgeing my 277 gear I am at 101.74 avoidance (with holy shield up), and If I change out a trinket I am above it. Reaching block cap is quite easy with 277 gear.

My stats are:
20.83% Dodge
22.43% Parry
43.48% Block (19,24 mastery -> 516 rateing)

As we level up in cata the rateings will ofcause change, but then again, mastery will start showing up on gear.

I predict that we will have so much mastery left over, that we can do 1 of 3 things:
1) Ignore holy shield totally and just go for cap without it up
2) Reforge mastery into exp and go for hard cap.
3) Spirit looks like a nice stat to pick up if nothing else (joke)

I dont see that we will change mastery to other avoidance stats untill we are exp hard capped.

[Klaudandus]

Only sad part is that ours is useless for magic, whereas DK and Druid works for all damage income and not just physical. Still, interesting, as in lolwut, if that's Blizz intention.

Savage Defense and Blood Absorb thingy both only affect physical damage.

That said, the strength of the Blood Shield is affected by magical damage taken in the last 5 seconds as well, but that absorb will only then work against physical damage.

Disregard that then.

[Warsadin]

Yeah, with the recent beta buff to our mastery, I can't imagine a world in Blizzard's mind where Paladins are not block capped.

[Lieris]

You take way too damage from unblocked hits to not block cap frankly. It's almost like it's intentional.

[Dantriges]

So we are now balanced on block capping?

[Warsadin]

I don't know if we are at this moment, but as soon as the latest build goes in through the beta, where our mastery gives us 24% innate block, and then adds 2% for each Mastery point, we certainly will have to be.

[Huon]

Again though, I don't see how this is a bad thing. As far as I know, Mastery is just another stat, not supposed to be a "stack the hell out of it" stat.

right?

I am excited to be block capped.

[Dantriges]

Well depends on how much the loot department slaps on mastery on items. And hm you can only reforge 40%.

Could be that stuff that is otherwise usable turns into crap or at least not as good, because we rather want another stat, like this stamina trinket with a mastery proc. If we equip for block, the proc is useless and you can´t get rid of it via reforging. And let´s hope we have choices. I mean ICC had one crap trinket at the time with Coorpse Tongue Coin and one one good one with Flawless Fang. Ok now I am happy with Corpse Tongue but when I first got it....

[Noradin]

Again though, I don't see how this is a bad thing. As far as I know, Mastery is just another stat, not supposed to be a "stack the hell out of it" stat.

right?

I am excited to be block capped.

The fact that it is a hard cap for us but not for anyone else might become a problem.
Most have no cap at all, but a soft cap would be the most interesting mechani - as long as it stays stepless balancable.

[Klaudandus]

Again though, I don't see how this is a bad thing. As far as I know, Mastery is just another stat, not supposed to be a "stack the hell out of it" stat.

right?

I am excited to be block capped.

The fact that it is a hard cap for us but not for anyone else might become a problem.
Most have no cap at all, but a soft cap would be the most interesting mechani - as long as it stays stepless balancable.

We can shed off some mastery after reaching the cap for other stats, like either dodge/parry since that would be more helpful to reduce our inc damage from physical attacks or hit/exp for threat.