Paladins: Defense = Effective Health?

[ohnoesitsBRAD]

Damage that takes you below 35% health is reduced by 20%. In addition, attacks which would otherwise kill you cause you to be healed by up to 30% of your maximum health (amount healed based on defense). This healing effect cannot occur more often than once every 2 min.

Does Defense equate to Effective Health through the use of Ardent Defender? Does the amount of health healed by AD cap at 30%? At what rate does Defense convert to Stamina (ex: 12:1 armor to stamina) when taking Ardent Defender into consideration?

[Paxi]

I believe the AD heal is capped at 30% apart from crits with 540+ defense, lower then the smaller heal you recieve.

[Makaijin]

The damage reduction portion of Argent Defender is determined by the talent points spent and is not affected by the amount of defense you have. So stacking defense isn't an EH increase.

As I'm aware the self heal is capped at 30%, and this cap is acheived as soon as you become crit immune to bosses, which is 540 defense skill at level 80. So going above 540 defense at level 80 does nothing. More importantly, the self heal has a 2 minute cooldown anyways, so in your case it's not an EH increase either by stacking more defense.

[ulushnar]

It's the same thing they did for Icebound Fortitude for DKs. Reduce the base effect and then allow a tank who is at the Defense minimum to get the previous full effect. It makes it less useful in PVP gear and that's about it. Defense above the minimum shouldn't affect it.

Makes me wonder how they're planning to balance these abilities in Cataclysm. The removal of Defense makes it harder to tell the Tanks from the PVPers.

[Makaijin]

They might not even go by how much defense skill you have above level cap, they could go by how much -% of crit and scale it off that. Something like -0% crit = no effect, -6% crit full effect and scale in between.

Since in catalysm it's going to be talents that determine how much crit immune we have. The internal coding could easily go off that. It could be coded like this already but coded so it ignores the crit reduction gained from resilience from gear.

[Elsie]

They might not even go by how much defense skill you have above level cap, they could go by how much -% of crit and scale it off that. Something like -0% crit = no effect, -6% crit full effect and scale in between.

Since in catalysm it's going to be talents that determine how much crit immune we have. The internal coding could easily go off that. It could be coded like this already but coded so it ignores the crit reduction gained from resilience from gear.

That still wouldn't fix problems for pvp as prot (which is currently in practice since ret sucks).

[Paxi]

They might not even go by how much defense skill you have above level cap, they could go by how much -% of crit and scale it off that. Something like -0% crit = no effect, -6% crit full effect and scale in between.

Since in catalysm it's going to be talents that determine how much crit immune we have. The internal coding could easily go off that. It could be coded like this already but coded so it ignores the crit reduction gained from resilience from gear.

That still wouldn't fix problems for pvp as prot (which is currently in practice since ret sucks).

How about if they make the AD proc based of avoidance? I can see it work a bit since its the only other stat we have compared to holy / retri in tons. And tanking gear in cata is doomed to come with avoidance to some extend. Its not the same elegant solution though. Not that the defense solution is neither, can't be all that fun for leveling tanks for example.

Sorry about the OT but the discussion about defense is to good to miss!