3.2 Block changes - indepth research?

Ascendant wrote:edit: so your math then implies that if you reduced your total avoidance enough (like replace all your parry with block) then block would be better than parry. It is a shame that gearing option does not exist for us.

There are a variety of complications of course.

There's the problem that as you get rid of parry, you get less and less block value for it.

There's the average amount of parry. Most people have less than 7% worth of parry in parry rating. Dropping all your parry still doesn't get your avoidance low enough to make the equal amount of block value better.

And there's the fact that my math assumes you're block capped. If you got rid of that much avoidance, you'd likely have to spend item budget on block rating, reducing the amount left for block value.

What it does show is that seen from another perspective, it's not block value that's the problem. The problem is avoidance simply being too high. Cutting avoidance by 20% across the board wouldn't solve every problem with block, but dramatically reducing avoidance is probably the first step that should be taken in the next expansion to fix other tanking issues.

This is what I didn't get.

They promised tanks more damage. They delivered but the DPS has simply outpaced us.
So while I am seeing 1800 DPS in Uldar, the Hunters are seeing close to 5K.
Back in TBC a tankadin saw a very similar damage ratio to the Hunters.

Instead of making tank gear become more general purpose beatdown + avoidance gear they boosted avoidance like crazy on it.

I'd love to see EVERY piece of tanking gear have 2 mitigation/avoidance itemization categories and 2 threat ones.
Imagine if every piece of plate had some dodge, parry or block and then also some hit, expertise or even haste/ar pen.
Yes, avoidance would only see around 40-50% max. But that would mean that you could bring back crushing blows and let the bears and DKs eat them while warriors and tankadins didn't. DKs and bears would have higher avoidance, more health and cooldowns but would have to eat 50% more damage occasionally and so would need the higher avoidance/cds.

Bosses could hit for less and block would be useful again, and then tanks could be built around doing more damage and threat. Heck, if you just plain added a good 30% damage to every tank and built em around this it would mean getting rid of the threat bonus added in LK. Tank damage would become important and tanks would be looking at pieces for threat potential too. Right now I barely bother looking at hit cap/expertise cap and just grab the highest avoidance pieces or pieces with more stam/mitigation. Threat isn't even on my radar and my threat is still insane. Only Hodir would be a threat test.

The block changes and DK/druid nerfs are going the wrong way with content. I hate seeing my life at 40% on a single hit from a boss and having to hope the healers are right on time or I avoid the next hit. Healers are no longer having to be skilled with heals. No more anticipating spikes and timing heals. It is just spam and hope OOM is not an issue. That's not a good thing.

TokenElf wrote:The block changes and DK/druid nerfs are going the wrong way with content. I hate seeing my life at 40% on a single hit from a boss and having to hope the healers are right on time or I avoid the next hit. Healers are no longer having to be skilled with heals. No more anticipating spikes and timing heals. It is just spam and hope OOM is not an issue. That's not a good thing.

you are only seeing 40% of your health away? and you think thats bad? hard modes are gonna make you cry

tbh I'd like a change to mostly remove healing as we know it (tm)

1. Make all the healing classes have a lot more in the way of pre-emptive shields. (which would absorb a certain DTPS)

2. Make healing spells much much less efficient than these shields.

3. The premise is that healers all shield the tank(s) to absorb a lot of the expected damage, as well as quickly shielding DPS before they take damage.

4. Healing after excess damage is taken (eg tank has an avoidance streak and takes 3 blows back to back) is mana intensive and reactive.

5. This way tanks want to minimise their damage spikes, to help preserve healer mana.

6. PvP would become more fun since you could try to second-guess the other team's shielding, and when you did deliver damage it would hurt the healer's mana.

7. Bosses wouldn't have to hit stupidly hard to make challenging encounters.

Candiru wrote:tbh I'd like a change to mostly remove healing as we know it (tm)

1. Make all the healing classes have a lot more in the way of pre-emptive shields. (which would absorb a certain DTPS)

2. Make healing spells much much less efficient than these shields.

3. The premise is that healers all shield the tank(s) to absorb a lot of the expected damage, as well as quickly shielding DPS before they take damage.

4. Healing after excess damage is taken (eg tank has an avoidance streak and takes 3 blows back to back) is mana intensive and reactive.

5. This way tanks want to minimise their damage spikes, to help preserve healer mana.

6. PvP would become more fun since you could try to second-guess the other team's shielding, and when you did deliver damage it would hurt the healer's mana.

7. Bosses wouldn't have to hit stupidly hard to make challenging encounters.

I don't it's the right time to change a major mechanic like healing. That might be something for the next Xpac, like they did with tanking for Wrath.

Candiru wrote:6. PvP would become more fun since you could try to second-guess the other team's shielding, and when you did deliver damage it would hurt the healer's mana.

PVP against disci priests and resto druids(to a lesser extent you replace shields with hots) curently works this way, from a cleave class POV(dk, ret, warr, etc), you wait for the healer to shield/hot your current target, then you switch, this way he has spent mana with little or no effect. I don't think your ideas would happen because they suggest removing the esential part of the healing philosophy, the actual healing.

On topic : They are afraid to boost BV more than they currently will do in 3.2 because they are afraid of the effect it will have on the prot specs/shield wearing classes in an arena setting, combining great survivability with great dps was a recipe for failure last season(see DKs).

You pretty much doom yourself to failure on tank DPS scaling relative to DPS when you put out large threat multipliers. 1.9x1.43 is a bad recipe for tanks being even remotely close to to regular DPSers, regardless of what kind of threat stats you're putting on gear.

As for the current encounter tuning issues they have, I really don't buy it as a function of avoidance. It's more a function of heal throughput than anything else.

If you want to see tank's take a lower percentage of their max health as damage each hit, the solution is a dramatic reduction in heal throughput.