So... how would you fix block?

Mutley wrote:

Darus wrote:Make block a percentage damage reduction, remove the block value stat and make block rating increase chance to block by x% and increase amount blocked by x%

That would scale exponentially, probably a bit overpowered.

Like armor?

I like the idea of getting hit builds up more and more BR/BV. Each unavoided hit increase BR by 10% and BV by 50%. This makes unlucky strings of hits less and less likely to kill you. And I also think bosses shouldnt do the same thing everytime. There shouldnt be DBM timers that know exactly when a boss is gonna do something, thats pretty much cheating if you think about it. Bosses actions should be as random as possible with little warning on upcoming actions. Keeps people on there toes at all times this way.

And how about implementing 2 kinds of shields, physical shields and magical ones. Seriously, 30,000 armor and 100% BR doesnt do a damn thing to magic damage, that has to be changed. Maybe its not as simple as it seems to me, but having a magic shield that blocks magic in the same manner as it would physical damage sounds reasonable to me. They would look cool as hell too. Imagine a shield made of pure flames or lightning.

Or is that just crazy talk?

Bundy wrote:Seriously, 30,000 armor and 100% BR doesnt do a damn thing to magic damage, that has to be changed.

no it doesn't

Bundy wrote:Or is that just crazy talk?

yes

I am still thinking of make Block another avoidance stat, make it subject to DR and we have the learning curve of block like parry (yes the worse one). With dodge, parry and block, the shield wielding class should have a better overall avoidance.

Screw the BV from other items, make it something like = 15-20% derived from your shield. Consolidate the BR and BV into 1 rating, as the devs should have the item buget to see how much BV = 1 BR.

If this added avoidance is still too powerful (like sunwell), either further penalize the learning curve or make block a static 50% reduction of blocked hits.

As for our talent, HS can be either a 30% boost to BR (becoming an oh sheep button), or a constant 3% boost with the traditional duration and CD. Redoubt can retain its 30% BV part but the proc change to a 3% increase in BR.

The most important thing is to get rid of the BV in current items (other than shield), defensive wise it is always either too high for trash or too low for boss, and it makes the item budget screw around.

Unfortunately I can see Blizz still screw around with the BV numbers, honestly speaking I don't think it will work:
- if the BV is still something to be used both offense and defense, to justify it has some actual use in defense, it will become an omfg bazooka, every 6 seconds.

- to avoid it become an omfg bazooka, as well as the 'I win' button for trash, it has to be tuned down, making the amount blocked laughable

Bundy wrote:
Seriously, 30,000 armor and 100% BR doesnt do a damn thing to magic damage, that has to be changed.

Wigglytough wrote:
no it doesn't

Which part are you saying not it doesnt to? Are you agreeing that all the armor and mitigation in the world doesnt prevent magic damage, or are you saying it shouldnt be changed in some way?

If your saying it doesnt need to be changed, im gonna have to ask you to elaborate. Why shouldnt it be possible to dodge an incoming fireball? Not instant stuff like curses or shadow word pain, but a slow ass fireball you can see coming a mile away? I dont see how its fair that melee have to get through all these defenses (dodge,parry,block, armor) while magic just hits every time without fail. Ya theres resistances, but thats too situational. If there was one overall magic resistance stat ok, but theres like 6.

Dont get me wrong, im not complaining, everything seems to work out in the end. It just doesnt quite make sense to me how that works.

I think my favorite "fix block" suggestion so far was to remove BV from gear, jack up the Str->BV conversion rate, and take all the BV item points and stick them in Str. Then make block work as thus:
Block Value reduces the damage taken by that number, just as it does now. If the incoming attack is greater than or equal to X%, reduce the attack by X% instead. For sake of example, let's say X is 30% baseline for all shield bearers. Then maybe fiddle with Redoubt to say Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 25% so your Block Value goes up 25% and your X goes up 25% to 55%. Then maybe change Holy Shield to a 20s duration 2m cooldown that increases the amount absorbed by your shield by 25%, so BV goes up another 25% and X goes up to 80%. Makes it almost avoidance, but not quite. Might be a little Warriory, but I like it.

Repost from another thread:


I'd love to have Block Rating reworked to be like "Shield Expertise" with modifications to our hit table for physical and magical damage, similar to the REALLY old THAC0 model.

The more "block rating" you acquire, the more proficient you are with a shield and the higher the likelihood you will be able to hide vital parts of your body behind your shield during magical attacks and the better you are at positioning your shield, enabling full force blows to sometimes become glancing blows dealing half damage minus block value (with that value rated into our details).

As well, I'd like block rating to modify our block value by a multiplier of sorts.

The way I see it, it would be like this:

Magical Protection when blocking = 25% reduction
Deflecting Blows = 9% chance when block is up
Base Block Value from Shield, Strength and Items = 2900
Modified Block Value = 4100
Chance to Block = 21%

Keep it simple.

BR subject to diminishing returns (yes, it's a direct nerf, but there should be SOME reason to gear for BR)

BV deals damage just as today (possibly with diminishing returns).

BV mitigates damage based on a percentage of incoming damage depending on attackers level AND is subject to diminishing returns. The curve could flatten out at, say, 40% mitigation for infinite BV. Let's play with the idea that 4000 BV mitigates 35% and a Naxx 25 threat-set (2000 BV?) mitigates 20%.

Two content patches after Ulduar, a special physical attack lands 50k damage after armour-reduction. A Green Banana (fruit being content after Ulduar) 25 geared tank has 50k health raidbuffed and 3000 BV soaking a full 30% of the 50k. Healers still need 4000 sp or something equally insane to top tank up, but that's subject to a different topic

Firstly have 25% of strength as block value similar to DK's 25% of str as parry value (amount can be tweaked) and have little or no block value on gear. This leaves one less stat to stack and can concentrate on HP/Str/Avoidance.

Next bosses need to be tweaked to hit less, but more often to maintain DPS. Say a boss hits half as hard but twice as often, that doubles the block effectiveness.

Block value or block rating...

It's a completely different ballgame for DK's because their strength directly benefits completely avoiding an attack, not reducing it.. we already get BV from strength so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Personally, I like the idea of BV or BR on gear being removed. To me, one of them is a wasted piece of itemisation. We could easily get the effects of them both from a single stat, or one from a conversion rather than a stat on gear.

With the size of hits incoming right now, and things to come, BV is utterly useless, even if they triple it, quadruple it or quintuple it...
Right now we have bosses hitting for ~25k and are able to survive if you're the right class with the right cooldowns (read as deathknight). Therefore blizzard are pigeon-holed into making bosses hit harder or for the same amount so current gear doesnt faceroll new content.
In the case of block, it is a flat reduction of damage currently and therefore you need to gear up further to improve it, hence it is hard to moderate without previous content becoming trivial. Let's say if block stays as is, we block for 5k in tier 9 gear.. if we go down to tier 7 for whatever reason, those bosses will hardly do any damage, and heroics will be afktanked. This also leads to the problem that if BV does get that high, bosses with purely physical damage might even be able to be solo farmed by tanks, especially paladins. Which = nerfs!
If we extend this it also means that new tiers of content means harder hitting trash which in turn means one-shotting clothies.

I've probably just typed away there teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but I was trying to illustrate the rocky road we travel.

It is unclear how blizzard are going to approach the problem because paladins have the niche of being able to gear in such a way they don't take full hits under normal circumstances. Blizzard have expressed that this would not be able to stay if they improved block.. unfortunately this then puts our mitigation stats directly in line with warriors, which is somewhere neither of us want to be.

My suggestion other than merging BV and BR itno one stat and having the new BR reduce damage by x%, would be to have block across the board reduce 10% of incoming damage be it physical or magical.

Redoubt: Increases % of damage blocked by 5/10/15%.
10% chance on block to increase next block by 50%.

I would change holy shield to only provide 10% block chance with 10 charges and increases the chance of redoubt proccing by 1% per charge remaining.

Might need tweaking with numbers so it isnt completely OP.. but its somethign quirky.

Combine Block Rating and Block Value.

Make Block Rating cause a bosses' attack speed to slow down on any hit after a block (the damage of an unblocked hit would still be the same as an unblocked hit and only modified by armor). The total damage to each blocking class will go down as the bosses' swing timer will be longer on certain hits.

Im still trying to get my head around blizzads upcomming 3.2 changes.
They know block blows, they have clearly said so, yet it appears we are to get this very 'bandaid' esque fix where block val is just doubled.

Great for my 39% 1775block val unbuffed blockset - more content i can safely solo!
But still terribad for ulduar.
Even worse it only scales with gear with block value on it... and thats pretty much 1 single piece for my EH/Avoidance gearset currently. So next to nill.

I still like my idea of keeping block rating % and block val (as a minimum), yet make the amount block scale by a % for any hits greater than your block value. Tie this % to block rating maybe?
It feels good, yet would probably be too hard to balance ingame.
eg my 39% block rating gear blocking 1775+39% of any extra damage feels OP.

I thin ki eventually see a big change ahead with block.
Keep miss/dodge/parry as traditional avoidance, but block morphs into an ability/talent rather than a mitigation/avoidance stat. And then share the stat around with the other 2 non-shield using tanks.
DK's blocking blows with their 2handed weapon, druids with their paws etc.

masterpoobaa said:
I think i eventually see a big change ahead with block.
Keep miss/dodge/parry as traditional avoidance, but block morphs into an ability/talent rather than a mitigation/avoidance stat. And then share the stat around with the other 2 non-shield using tanks.
DK's blocking blows with their 2handed weapon, druids with their paws etc.

Well except blocking a hit with your weapon is a parry..... Which in itself doesnt add up to me. I can completly deflect/absorb a 25k hit with my weapon but can only mitigate a small percentage with my SHIELD? The post above is good though, make the attack speed of the next hit reduced after a block occurs. Thats actualy really creative thinking. Fixing block without actualy fixing block itself.

Dunno about you but when I see myself against a raid boss I don't think I'm actually deflecting their attack when I parry, I think of myself using my weapon against their weapon to push myself out of the instead of using my legs like when I dodge. But that's just me.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/1803123 ... worse.html

Grrr, sounds like even GC has no clue about why Block is a shitty defense mechanism, let alone buffing the BV number will make huge shield slam dmg and will cause further problem.

He knows the current BV figure is not enough, but what he missed is block itself is a 'hit invitng' stat. We make ourselves to be hit easier thus making our BV kick in, at the cost of forgoing avoiding that hit completely.

Unless this polarizing problem can be addressed, block is not going to be a good mitigation tool. /shurg