The REAL Block cap (or the New Avoidance percentage)

Hi all,

First off, my first post, great forum, been following it for years.

As I have been gearing up for Ulduar I have begun to notice that I tend to drop below the 102.5% avoidance (to be block capped) to try and increase my stamina. Every time I get down to selecting gear I find that I place more value in increasing armor and health then to keeping the 102.5%. My reasoning has been that in every proper raid I usually get enough buffs to push me well above the 102.5% so gearing to keep that lvl is really a waste.

What are your experiences? What avoidance do you usually aim for (100%, 99%?). Is the 102.5% a thing of the past? If so what should new tanks be really trying to balance to? More health at the sacrifice of keeping 100% instead of 102.5%?

I look forward to your input.

Cheers
Onore
Azjol-Nerub

Firstly, it's 102.4%. Secondly, you're correct that you don't need that. You can expect BoK, MotW, Horn of Winter and debuffs on the boss to help make some up. MotW is 37 AGI and HoW is 155, totalling 192 AGI + what you get from Kings, which is 17 in your gear. The total is 209 AGI, or 4.02% dodge, which you don't need from gear. The boss should also have -3% hit on him, totalling 7.02% 'bonus' avoidance.

The boss should, but of course this rarely happens. Until it isn't a ridiculous DPS loss on those that can provide this debuff, it isn't worth considering as most players are focused on maximizing their capabilities in a chosen role just as we'd be up in arms having to take a DPS supporting talent at the cost of survivability.

It isn't a ridiculous DPS loss for a moonkin to supply it.

Panzerdin wrote:It isn't a ridiculous DPS loss for a moonkin to supply it.

No, but it's a dps loss and every moonkin I've brought this up with would dread to see his/her epeen shrink just a tiny bit.

Well... If you're hardcore enough to be raiding, you're hardcore enough for people to raid properly. I mean, do they seriously think the DPS loss will upset the raid leader more than not doing what he/she wants?

So a good point made on the raid buffs. Now what about crunching the numbers:

If you are missing 1% avoidance to get health, (lets say +24 stam gem):

So a real basic situation - boss hits for 24,000 dmg, over the course of a fight, you have 1% less avoidance so in essence should take 24,000 more damage after 100 hits or 240 dmg per hit. If I have a +24 stam gem that gives me a health pool of +240 more health. Assuming the healer is healing me after each hit the two numbers more or less work out over the course of a fight.

Now if you are worried about pulse damage (meaning that one time that the boss lands unblocked) then that is only your block value which is 2,000 extra damage. With all the over healing that won't even be seen.

I think the 102.4% is over rated and holding around 95% (even if you don't get the raid buffs to put you over the top) is a better "soft" cap.

Comments?

Cheers
Onore
Azjol-Nerub

I think I just told you that.

Gamingdevil wrote:

Panzerdin wrote:It isn't a ridiculous DPS loss for a moonkin to supply it.

No, but it's a dps loss and every moonkin I've brought this up with would dread to see his/her epeen shrink just a tiny bit.

You can gain more raid dps by applying the debuff and swapping an avoidance trinket to DMC:G, although you wouldn't really do this.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23528 7th or so post down shows why the moonkin glyph is bad.

As Panzerdin said, you shouldn't aim for 102.4% unbuffed as you end up wasting block rating when raid buffed.

Gamingdevil wrote:

Panzerdin wrote:It isn't a ridiculous DPS loss for a moonkin to supply it.

No, but it's a dps loss and every moonkin I've brought this up with would dread to see his/her epeen shrink just a tiny bit.

This is pretty much my experience. Panzer's right that you should be able to ask them not to use the glyph, but Moonkins hate to do that. A quick perusal of last night's logs of our General kill shows that Insect Swarm makes up 10% of our Moonkin's DPS, so not using the glyph would be (for this specific Moonkin on this fight) a 3% damage reduction... for 3% avoidance to the tank. Worth it imo.

EDIT: That comes out to about 0.15% of the raid's total damage.

There's a very easy solution to this problem, and it comes from a verb change in 'ask the moonkin to change glyphs'.

I just want to mention here that while I completely agree with Panzerdin regarding where the value lies, I also happen to play a moonkin alt. While reading up on my moonkin alt I found it a little odd (coming from a tankadin background) that EVERY post regarding what glyphs to take state the IS glyph is a "MUST HAVE" glyph.

I also know that, having played a tankadin since early TBC, we rarely give a damn about what anybody else says and do our own thing as best we can. Otherwise we'd all have been playing warriors after Kara (or just tanking trash in Hyjal).

Sure, the simple solution is to tell the moonkin to glyph out of IS, but I think that this type of detailed tweaking at the raid level is just now becoming necessary in WotLK with Ulduar. The result may be some ruffled feathers as the moonkin gets told how to play his character to best benefit the raid. Ultimately the successful guilds are the ones that work as a team to down the bosses, so it may just prove to be a test of which moonkins are team players and which ones need to be replaced.

3% avoidance really wont save you in ulduar, maybe for thorim hard mode, but not for much else, the extra damage on the other hand, really stacks up, and when your doing say 3D zerg, and you wipe at .6% like i did last night (got it next try though), you see the importance of every little bit

The value is in reducing the chance of burst on the tank.

moduspwnens wrote:This is pretty much my experience. Panzer's right that you should be able to ask them not to use the glyph, but Moonkins hate to do that. A quick perusal of last night's logs of our General kill shows that Insect Swarm makes up 10% of our Moonkin's DPS, so not using the glyph would be (for this specific Moonkin on this fight) a 3% damage reduction... for 3% avoidance to the tank. Worth it imo.

EDIT: That comes out to about 0.15% of the raid's total damage.

I also have a moonkin alt, and let me tell you that keeping that 3% avoidance up is more than a 3% dps nerf to the moonkin. The reason is that 100% IS uptime is not a priority. Your dps is better if you let it fall off during eclipse procs and just keep spamming starfire. Keeping 100% IS uptime messes up your rotation and forces you to sacrifice a valuable GCD when eclipse is up.

4pc t8 might change things, but without it maintaining 100% IS uptime is a dps nerf for moonkin independent of any glyphs.