Reforging/Mastery/Block Cap Compilation Guide (4.0.X)

[Kale]

Back to the days of block. Fun.

Okay, so. I went a little crazy at first and reforged everything into mastery. Ended up at like 91% avoidance before HS. I restored some hit and expertise to get those numbers where they needed to be, was still at like 89%.
So my question becomes, is it still favorable to push block off the table in favor of dodge, or should I keep it about even with parry now? For the moment I changed most of it back into dodge, and now sit at around 87.5% avoidance with Kings+Horn.

[Awyndel]

Let's make a list of buffs wich affect it.

Here is what I could think of after one raid:

Kings/Motw
Horn
Ag food
Blessing of light ( last word )

I have a bit of a problem with simulating these all the time and go back to a vendor spending lots of time and gold to get it right. I hope rawr or w/e comes up with a simulation soon.

I made a seperate macro with 15% extra, so I don't have to do holy shield at the vendor.

[Ukeru]

A bit of a simple question.
Is it worth dropping stam gems to pickup more avoidance like dodge or parry?
I've got Mastery on every piece of gear taken from the highest green stat, minus my libram since I was shy some exp and added some off that. I'm sitting at 97.87 with HS factored in.

Also, sorry if this is in the wrong place.

[fuzzygeek]

A bit of a simple question.
Is it worth dropping stam gems to pickup more avoidance like dodge or parry?
I've got Mastery on every piece of gear taken from the highest green stat, minus my libram since I was shy some exp and added some off that. I'm sitting at 97.87 with HS factored in.

Also, sorry if this is in the wrong place.

Worth it, imo.

[Awyndel]

Well expertise is really great and all, but imo stamina and the block cap come first. Also, it's much more efficient to reforge into mastery, then gem for parry/dodge. If you're still short gemming is worth it. Pick up the best socket bonuses first.

[sculder]

A bit of a simple question.
Is it worth dropping stam gems to pickup more avoidance like dodge or parry?
I've got Mastery on every piece of gear taken from the highest green stat, minus my libram since I was shy some exp and added some off that. I'm sitting at 97.87 with HS factored in.

Also, sorry if this is in the wrong place.

Depending on your gear, it might be worth it to use a heroic CTC (or normal i guess...) to cover the gap in avoidance. Dropping a stam trinket like Corroded Skeleton Key will deal a large blow to your health pool, but a properly reforged CTC can net you a few more percent of avoidance, and possibly free up other gear to be reforged into expertise or hit, while not having to regem any stam.

Without knowing your gear setup it's merely a suggestion.

[Awyndel]

97.87 seems awefully low for reforging all but one item. Are you sure you're using the correct formula, parry dodge and block from the sheet, 5% base miss, 15% holy shield? Make sure you buff kings and eat agility food. If you can get it also try horn and if you have it the last word proc. If you can't get a hold of those to test just aim for approx 100.

Have you tried replacing some of the bonus armor gear with some of the gear with high dodge/parry, in order to free up more mastery?

[agetro]

Well I don't know what I can do to keep my Dodge at 21.6% Parry at 21.44% and block high enough to reach the 87.4%. Right now I sit just under 20% on dodge/parry and like 43% block to hit 87.39% unbuffed. If I reforge, or restore, I lose mastery, which brings down my overall down even more than 87.4%. I dunno what to do. I basically reforged my Dodge mostly to Mastery, and some Parry to Mastery. I think I did one reforge to Expertise to reach the soft cap too.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... &cn=Agetro

[Fayia]

Was wondering the same...(unfortunately european armory displays buggy for me atm)

Reforged to 10 expertise (20 with the truth glyph), 190 hit and the Dodge around 22.0% Parry around 21.4% but cannot get block past 30%. With BoK on, the macro shows 79% avoidance, which is in a mix of ICC 25 normal and HM gear of an average ilv of 270. Can it be so hard to reach the desired avoidance or am I totally missing something?

[Syncognition]

So here is what I've done so far (I can only give general numbers from memory, but the concept should be suitably conveyed).

I'm still in mostly bonus armor gear, as I have only been 80 for a couple of months and never accumulated the massive amount of emblems that others on this board probably have to afford to replace my gear. Before any reforging I was sitting at about 22% of dodge and parry each, though I can't remember what my block rating was. As of now I am in 264 for most pieces with the exception of my helm (251 T10), my chest (245 crafted), Shoulders (251 Blood Prince Spaulders), and weapons (232 sword and 219 shield from 5-mans).

I basically went through my gear and reforged whatever I had the most of between dodge and parry on a given piece of gear to mastery. The only time I reforged hit to mastery was on one of my rings. I did this because the amount of hit reforged could be made up for with accuracy on my weapon to stay above melee hit cap, as most of my gear lost enchants from the patch and I would need to re-enchant anyway. I went through and had my gear enchanted with Dodge, Parry, Agility, and Stam, and in the end have come to 82.40% based on that macro (about 21% dodge, 21% parry, 35% block, 5% miss) with 49K HP Buffed with Kings.

I plan to get the Cataclysmic chest, as switching to the Tier 10 helm from the 245 offset helm has left me at 17 expertise with seal of truth (down from 27) that the chest will make up for. I will reforge the Dodge to Mastery, and enchant it with dodge. I'm still using the PVP shoulder enchant, so I need to get my rep up to replace the enchant on that as well. Based on the results of that I will determine if I should stack stamina or gem for avoidance on the chest, which may actually leave me with less HP than I currently have.

This is definitely an interesting process. Sorry to ramble about it, but please let me know if there is anything else you might suggest that would provide better results in trying to reach avoidance cap.

[Awyndel]

Ah I understand the confusion now. Having Dodge at 21.6% Parry at 21.44% is not a requirement. It is merely desirable for overall damage reduction. But reaching the block cap is in all cases more important then that.

Also having the same amount of parry and dodge is desirable for having the same DR. But normally you will be lowering the highest stat on an item to buy mastery. Wich in most cases is dodge. Once again reaching the block cap is far more important then this DR thing.

If you take these things into account ( well erhm, actually, thus ignore them ) , and buff horn of winter, you should not have any problems reaching your block cap .

[agetro]

Well I actually had to reduce the stat that gave me the most points in some cases. If Dodge gave me more than Parry on one item, I just went with that to get me more mastery. I seem to be doing well in randoms anyhow. I haven't had any complaints about being squishy, in fact I'm getting a lot of praise, more than before patch. LoL. I guess there are way too many people that still don't get it.

In fact, in Beta, my dodge is WAY lower than my Parry, like 75% of parry, from the quest items alone. Most of the gear from leveling is giving more parry. Plus I guess it doesn't help that I'm using the BoA Guild Helm and Cloak, (which is DPS, but still high stam/str)

[Fayia]

Ah I understand the confusion now. Having Dodge at 21.6% Parry at 21.44% is not a requirement. It is merely desirable for overall damage reduction. But reaching the block cap is in all cases more important then that.

That seems to be the issue. I got myself buffed with HoW to see where my stats are at, then reforged to a point where I was at Dodge at 21.6% Parry at 21.44% with HoW and reached 40.3% block (meant reforging pretty much every item of armor/weapon, not trinkets)

Dodge is at 19.6% Parry at 20.44% without the raidbuffs...anxious to see how our first raid goes tonight.

[sculder]

Ah I understand the confusion now. Having Dodge at 21.6% Parry at 21.44% is not a requirement.

technically no, but if your dodge is at 21.6%, and you reforge dodge rating to mastery, you might gain avoidance percentage but the theoretical damage you take will be more. The avoidance you'd lose by reforging that dodge is more than 0.3 * block% gained from the subsequent mastery. So no, it's not a "requirement," per se, but if you're trying to min/max for survivability it's not good to reforge below those percentages.

[Awyndel]

That's subjective. Survivability has been defined in multiple ways. You're talking about EH vs total damage taken.

Currently EH ( and lately also mitigation by itself ) is far more important then damage taken. The balance might shift a bit in the future, but I don't see that changing anytime soon. The block cap is possibly our best source of both EH and mitigation.