Some preliminary conclusions concerning avoidance in 3.2

Yep, the ratios only apply to avoidance affected by DR, so the 1.875:1 only applies to dodge/parry after you have subtracted out your base values and talents.

I don't know if there was any similar analysis done on this with the old values (Theckhd may have). On my end, I used algebra to figure out some equations, but there are two types. I will try to go dig them up if Theck doesn't have anything handy.

As a reply to two posts:

First, agility is part of your diminished dodge - you can treat agility as dodge rating by dividing it by 1.324. As Mithos said, though, you should subtract off 10% from the dodge and parry percentage totals displayed on your character sheet to arrive at the diminished values to compare to the ideal ratio.

Second, for 3.1, there is no best overall ratio. As the conversion between parry rating-parry% and dodge rating-dodge% are not the same in 3.1, -and- they diminish to different values, solving the differential equation to find an ideal ratio will not yield a constant number. It will vary anywhere from 3.5:1 to 2:1, if I remember the numbers I calculated earlier today correctly.

On the other hand, based on similar brute-force calculations like I did for 3.2, once you do manage to get your dodge and parry to have the same marginal benefits post-DR in 3.1, you'll want to stack them in an ~1.6:1 ratio to keep them there (I don't remember the second and third decimal places that I calculated - the code is at my work computer and I'm too tired to re-create it this late). The reason that this ratio is smaller than it is in 3.2 is that you have to have already stacked much more dodge to get them to have the same post-DR value.

The changes they made in 3.2 happened to make the ideal dodge%-parry% ratio be a constant and make it the same as the ratio you need to keep stacking them for best avoidance - there is no such overall best ratio in 3.1.

jere wrote:Character sheet typically refers to the values you see displayed, not the values in the tooltip. The values displayed on the character sheet directly are post DR.

EDIT: here is a pic of me in prot spec but with full healing gear (so no def, extra agility, parry, dodge, etc.):
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/3041/charsheet.jpg

10% dodge before DR for a human paladin with anticipation talented.

Interesting. I could have sworn the tankspot article said that our base agility also gave us pre-DR dodge. I guess perhaps it does, but our base dodge is 3.35% so that it's 5% after adding the dodge from base agility. Not that it matters, since functionally it's the same on our end. I'll update the formula then so that it's 10 dodge and parry.

I suppose you could test it on live if we could decrease our stats if Vindication affect base agility; put your healing gear on and duel a ret paladin. If your agility drops below 90 and dodge decreases, we have our answer.

Well, on live currently:

We get 5% dodge from both base dodge and naked agility (neither of which are part of diminishing returns).

90/52.0833333333333 = 1.728% dodge not affected by DR:
EJ folks found the base dodge of all paladins to be 3.2685% (they might have done this via the naked agility or something.)
----------------
4.9965% ==> 5.00% character sheet dodge.

I am pretty sure that naked dodge is figured there because if you take a paladin of another race, either naked or in healing gear but in prot spec, you won't get 10% dodge, it will be slightly off. The only difference there is naked dodge, as base values are universal per class, not race, while naked stats are specific per race/class combo.

I am pretty sure naked dodge gets figured in before DR. So far, all the hand calculations I have done using character sheets seem to fit with that.

On the test realm, I still get 10%, but I honestly didn't check to make sure the dodge/agiility changes had made it in yet. The note did say they would adjust base dodge values to compensate for the agility changes, which seems to be another note supporting the idea that naked dodge is figured in there in the 5% before talents.

Xenix wrote:As a reply to two posts:
First, agility is part of your diminished dodge - you can treat agility as dodge rating by dividing it by 1.324. As Mithos said, though, you should subtract off 10% from the dodge and parry percentage totals displayed on your character sheet to arrive at the diminished values to compare to the ideal ratio.

I am pretty sure this isn't the case for your naked dodge (you probably meant that is the case, and was just talking about additional agility, so the following stuff is just for clarity sake). It looks as if it never diminishes.

Lets look at my char sheet I have 551 def skill (6.04%), 456 dodge rating (11.58890255% dodge), and 112 agility, 90 of which is base).

assuming they split: 20 agil => 0.4224%
assuming no split: 112 agil => 2.1504%

Base dodge is 3.2685%

Assuming they split:
10% noDR dodge + 1/(1/88.129021+0.956/(6.04 + .4224+11.58890255)) = 10 + 1/(1/88.129021+0.956/18.05130255) = 10 + 15.5504%

That makes my character sheet dodge = 25.55%, which matches my armory atm.

Now assume they don't split (all agility is affected by DR):

8.2685% noDR dodge + 1/(1/88.129021+0.956/(6.04 + 2.1504+11.58890255)) = 8.2685 + 1/(1/88.129021+0.956/19.77930255) = 8.2685 + 16.7559 = 25.0244

That makes my character sheet dodge = 25.02%, which does not match my armory atm.

Given that and the fact that different races show different "naked" dodges, it at least seems reasonable to assume:
Naked agility is not affected by DR
Naked agility is included in your naked dodge stat

double check my math though.

Majiben wrote:If I recall correctly, there has been no testing to show that the defense is actually stepped. The tooltips are not to be trusted as shown with expertise not actually being stepped. Now testing this is quite time consuming considering the small percentages involved. Just food for thought.

That is definitely a consideration, but I am less likely to believe that one since the stepped nature also matches with our character sheet dodge/parry/block values. If defense were not stepped, I would expect those to change differently. I wouldn't expect them to calculate two dodge values: 1 actual dodge (non-stepped-defense) and one "display on character sheet" dodge (stepped defense). Expertise never really had that issue as you don't add in expertise results with anything else on the character sheet.

Alright, thanks for that . And yea, you'd have to take of 10% for a human but something else for a different class because of the base agi.

Seems that for a draenei paladin, naked dodge is 9.94% since we have 3 less base agility than humans. Won't make much difference if we subtract off 10% instead of 9.94% though.


Oh, and I meant that to say bonus agility could be treated as dodge rating, not your total agility. Hmm - after looking at the previous posts, I'm not sure what one I thought I was replying to with that. Must've been more tired than I thought.

theckhd wrote:That looks like the correct algorithm:

1. Take current ratings and subtract out 689 def, 96 dodge, and 64 parry
2. Figure out your current ratio of dodge:def:parry
3. if one of these is higher than the ideal ratio of 2.4:1.8:1, swap out some of the rating that's above the target ratio for a rating that's below or at the target value.
4. Recalculate and lather, rinse, repeat.

The actual value of dodge rating to subtract out is approximate at this point - as you noted I used 300 rather than the exact value. If we can agree on a default buff set that gives an exact value of buffed agility, then I can re-run the simulation to figure out what that target value of dodge rating should correctly be. My guess is that it's not going to be too vastly different, and that if you just aim for the ratio overall you'll be about right.

I think you've moved past this point, but...

I don't just have baseline + raid buffed agility. I already have agility from my cloak enchant, leg enchant, and red gem slots. If this is still the rule-of-thumb style you suggest, would something like the following work?

1. Multiply agility by 0.95 and add to dodge rating.
2. Run through your formula as noted above, using the adjusted dodge rating value.
3. With the final ratio of 2.4:1.8:1, feel free to use agility instead, but multiply agility by 0.95 then add to dodge to include in its portion.

Xenix wrote:Seems that for a draenei paladin, naked dodge is 9.94% since we have 3 less base agility than humans. Won't make much difference if we subtract off 10% instead of 9.94% though.

That makes sense then:

87 agility/52.083333333333 = 1.6704% dodge
3.2685+1.6704 = 4.9389% = 4.94% on character sheet.

That seems to support 3.2685 base dodge + naked agility dodge + anticipation

jere wrote:Character sheet typically refers to the values you see displayed, not the values in the tooltip. The values displayed on the character sheet directly are post DR.

I didn't know that. So basically we take wha't' on the defense pane of the character sheet (not the value from rating in the tooltip), subtract 10 from dodge and parry, and then the rest should be in a 1.875:1 ratio? Is that accurate?

Sabindeus wrote:I didn't know that. So basically we take wha't' on the defense pane of the character sheet (not the value from rating in the tooltip), subtract 10 from dodge and parry, and then the rest should be in a 1.875:1 ratio? Is that accurate?

Yup. With the added caveat that Xenix's work has shown that every so often it's worth stacking defense to get to the next "efficiency point". The ratio of dodge:parry would stay the same though, and as long as you keep that ratio you'll always be within half a gem's worth of the optimum avoidance regardless of what you do with defense.

So, although I'm happy as the next person to do abstract theorycraft, as far as practical rules go, wouldn't it just be easier to install rating buster once it's updated for 3.2, since it takes DR into account, and just use it to tell if dodge or parry or defense will give you more avoidance at whatever gear point your at?

Yes, but this helps for subtle differences like gemming. Gear is a huge restriction and forms the foundations I suppose. For example, if you had gear which took you over the ratio on the parry ide, you could gem dodge to bring it back down, and vice versa with high dodge --> gemming for parry.

Well actually I think rating buster is more useful when your considering gemming. You can just mouseover a dodge and a parry gem, and if the parry gem gives more, you socket it instead. Easy.

Modal wrote:Well actually I think rating buster is more useful when your considering gemming. You can just mouseover a dodge and a parry gem, and if the parry gem gives more, you socket it instead. Easy.

...And if Defence gives you more you're screwed cuz the bloody addon converts it into skill not avoidance(s?) can I get away with saying avoidances?)

It's nice to know the math, knowing the math also encourages you to rejig your current gear to the correct ratios.

By the way, this;

theckhd wrote:

Code: Select all

(character_sheet_dodge_% - 10) / (character_sheet_parry_% - 10) = 1.88

Could be converted into a fairly short ingame macro, unfortunately my macro knowledge is not good enough to do it but it's simpler logic to the one for the unhittable macro from what I can see.

QuantumDelta wrote:...And if Defence gives you more you're screwed cuz the bloody addon converts it into skill not avoidance(s?) can I get away with saying avoidances?)

It does (somewhat), it's just not activated by default.
There's an option somewhere to display the total avoidance in the stat summary.