patch 5.2 ?

[Darielle]

Sha of Fear does swing 4 times instantly with Thrash every 9 seconds though, and Dread Thrash is 6 swings (heroic mode) every 36 seconds. Surely they would skew the bit where you are tanking Sha in favour of avoidance GC?

Not meaningfully. Those kinds of things are still worse than faster swings because 3/6 at once means you're getting into higher ratios of wasted procs, AND the interruptions from his specials still happen.

In fact, as Ahti(Branar) said in that thread, when you're AoE tanking, you start getting into a point where Haste becomes even more valuable because it'll also allow you to prevent procs being wasted during the gcd's by giving you a shorter gcd.

[Fetzie]

Sha of Fear does swing 4 times instantly with Thrash every 9 seconds though, and Dread Thrash is 6 swings (heroic mode) every 36 seconds. Surely they would skew the bit where you are tanking Sha in favour of avoidance GC?

In fact, as Ahti(Branar) said in that thread, when you're AoE tanking, you start getting into a point where Haste becomes even more valuable because it'll also allow you to prevent procs being wasted during the gcd's by giving you a shorter gcd.

Hadn't thought about that.

[Sagara]

In other words, business as usual, only that avoidance gets a 0.2 rating on AMR instead of 0.1... Let's see what Theck's maths will bring - it's too late at night, can't wrap my brains properly around statistics right now.

[Darielle]

In other words, business as usual, only that avoidance gets a 0.2 rating on AMR instead of 0.1... Let's see what Theck's maths will bring - it's too late at night, can't wrap my brains properly around statistics right now.

It should state a nerf at all levels of Haste, because as Kihra pointed out, 25% avoidance is fairly high, and is NOT something someone would have while stacking Haste in any way (the discussion in that WoW thread was about stacking avoidance vs stacking haste)

[Jadhzia]

Another follow-up from GC:

No change to haste, dodge, parry or Sanctity of Battle. Grand Crusader changes to proc on dodge / parry to increase their value for active mitigation.

To address other concerns I've seen: yes, this is a small nerf to DPS when not the focused tank (and is similar to blocks for warriors). Yes, this improved Holy Power generation when AE tanking (but again is similar to Revenge for warriors, which hasn't been a gigantic balance problem). No, you shouldn't have to give up all your haste gear. This change should just let any dodge or parry you do accumulate be more attractive.

The comparison to warriors seems to make sense, but I don't play my warrior tank enough to be sure.

[Sagara]

Well, it has a non-zero effect on haste because we lose the Haste -> CS -> GC -> HoPo interaction, but it's going to be what? 10% of haste's HoPo generation? Haste still decreases CS's and J's cooldown, and on a minor note, still influences SS, SoI and Battle Healer.

Buffing Avoidance was a nice way to make it non-relevant, but it's only half of the problem, and actually the minor half. Gut feeling and rough guesstimations makes me think Haste is still strong as all hell, with no sign of letting up. I'm seriously worried that trying stuff around will only shorten the reaction time we'll have when the BIG haste nerf hits.

Let's talk hypothetics for a second - what happens when dodge/parry's value rise, everything else remaining equal? If they don't overshoot Haste, it's going to be business as usual - we'll keep working on Haste because the other alternatives are either too weak on spike management to be considered, regardless of TDR increase (Avoidance) or don't offer a strong value for the lost DPS opportunity (Mastery). But the moment Parry/Dodge overshoots Haste, then we're going to be gearing for control/avoidance, and Mastery will become the "dump stat" instead of Haste, for the same reason we don't gear for Mastery right now (i.e. not upside against the downside of lost dps)

Although, I'll admit this is hypothesis, with everything else remaining equal, which is far from a guarantee. We'd better have hard numbers before we start going on a limb.

[Darielle]

But the moment Parry/Dodge overshoots Haste, then we're going to be gearing for control/avoidance, and Mastery will become the "dump stat" instead of Haste, for the same reason we don't gear for Mastery right now (i.e. not upside against the downside of lost dps)

If we're at that point, we'd probably still go with Haste, because Haste would give easily more dps while still giving similar survivability (unless Dodge/Parry doesn't just overshoot it, it gets to the point where it eclipses it so hard that Haste would destroy sparkle).

[Nooska]

I think this change does exactly what GC vaguely indicated. It raises the relative value of avoidance / lowers the relative value of haste. Not in any paradigm changing way, whihch would also be a hard knock to all the raiders out there that gear smart.
Also "This change should just let any dodge or parry you do accumulate be more attractive." seems to sum it up.

I could think that the change to GC procs would make mastery better than haste in the calculations that Theck does for the weights though (as haste now contributes less to HoPo gains).

Oh and I'll agree with a Woot! - Its nice that a simple change suggested by the rational part of the community can be lifted more or less verbatim and used. It could be a "Okay lets do as they suggest and watch them fry in their own fat when itdoesn't work" - but thats just the tiny paranoid, conspiracy theory loving, part of the reptillian brain. In all actuality I think its because it made sense, and does what they wanted to do on the small scale.

[Skye1013]

Wait... you mean they actually listened to the community?!??!!1?

/endoftheworld

[KysenMurrin]

They do listen to players from time to time. In fact listening to players too much is what got the Warlock dev reassigned.

[Nooska]

And what started the "we don't have class devs" (anymore).

[KysenMurrin]

They've been saying they don't have class devs for years, and yet that happened just on the last content patch...

[Sagara]

Wait... you mean they actually listened to the community?!??!!1?

/endoftheworld

Even money says they had that same idea on their checklist, and used our own opinions to help weight in their own math.

[Teranoid]

Wait... you mean they actually listened to the community?!??!!1?

/endoftheworld

Of course they do. Look at the clusterfuck called Cataclysm.

[benebarba]

Wait... you mean they actually listened to the community?!??!!1?

/endoftheworld

Of course they do. Look at the clusterfuck called Cataclysm.

"Oh, we thought you wanted harder. We understand what you mean now."

and thus daily rep grinds returned