blocking, and it's usefulness as we progress

I've been pondering the usefulness of block rating and block value for a while now.

We'll have to make gear choices between blocking stats (block value/rating), and avoidance (defense/dodge/parry), as we're gearing up, so which is better?

What I came to realize, is that blocking is better right now then it's ever going to be, from here it's nothing but downhill. Why? The strength of a block goes down the harder a boss hits. And what happens as we progress in raids? Stuff hits harder. Thus, without some kind of % scaling, blocking will become less and less useful the further we progress.

Avoidance on the other hand, is % decrease in damage taken, thus it scales linearly with progression (as bosses hit harder, you still take a flat % less damage over time).

So if blocking is good now (and it probably is), it's got nowhere to go but down. I have a hunch that block rating, block value, and getting unhittable (while useful now), should probably be thrown away at some point later, in favor of more avoidance.

Not sure where this came from..honorshammer linked it to me, but playing with it will outline the problem.

http://rehfeld.us/wow/armor-vs-block.html

I ran some math (that may or may not be accurate, but the concept is certainly accurate):

at 5400 damage block value = armor
at 10760 damage block value is 1/2 the worth of armor
at over 20K damage block value is only 1/4 the worth of armor


given HP levels in WOTLK, I'll guesstimate that stuff is going to probably hit for between 10K and 20K damage as we start to progress, rendering blocking somewhere between 25% and 50% as good as armor/avoidance are (strictly speaking from a % damage decreased over time stand-point).


Conversely, lets go the other way..and lets farm noobie content

stuff hitting for 2675 blockvalue 2x better then armor
at 1350 block value is 4x better then armor
etc.

It's broken scaling, so it's OP'd early, and near worthless later. I'm thinking we should be planning ahead and keep an eye towards avoidance more-so then blocking (even though our talents/class seems built more around blocking).

http://www.maxdps.com/warrior/protection.php

playing with the prot warrior tool I get the exact same results, when i put paladin levels of block % in

around 6K it's even to dodge
around 10K it's half as good as dodge
at 20K it's 1/4 as good as dodge is



So I guess the question is...how hard is stuff going to hit us for?

and with a little research..I found bosses in the current game hitting for as much as 12K. So worst case, we're looking at blocking being about 50% worse then avoidance (in terms of damage taken over time) even in current content (the 12K per hit happened in the eye 25 man)

The general premise here is correct I think, but there are some important considerations that need to be made before people start DE'ing everything with Block on it.

1) Block value is comparable to armor, not dodge, in that it is effective health vs melee attacks (and in fact is slightly better* than armor now that elementals can be blocked). Because it is effective health, it has a value that goes beyond simply how much damage overall it mitigates.

2) Try not to make too many assumptions about future content. Yes, scaling melee damage is a pretty safe bet, but don't assume that it will always come in 2 second chunks. Look at the three "toughest" bosses at the moment -- KT, Maly, Sarth+3. Magic damage comprises the most dangerous parts of all of them. Or hell we may see another Shadowsword Berserker type mob, where you have 2 mobs hitting you 2-4 times a second for 1/4 a regular hit. You'd still be taking as much as a boss hitting for 20k, but it'd be in 5k chunks, making BV godly.

I'm pushing towards hard avoidance and high stam/armour, but I'm also keeping a lot of block gear handy.

Also note this: block rating is basically required to hit the block cap now. As better gear comes out you'll have to spend less and less on block because you'll get more dodge, parry, and miss. It's not that block doesn't really scale, but that we want to establish a baseline of always blocking, and then we can scale our avoidance up from there.

Cap your block, then start beefing up the other stats. You should naturally get enough BV from strength and such that you shouldn't need to worry about BV items.
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No really, I'm not addicted.

i came to the same reflexion.

as said, it will depend how hard/how fast are the next bosses

it will also depends itemization. we may get nice big BV stats especially for us (warrior with hight avoidance/low BR may pass on it)

Really it is no different to TBC then, we stacked block rating early on to reach 102.4% and then as our gear evolved we pushed for more avoidance, this worked really well and avoidance tanks were the norm. We really didn't look at BV as viable for anything more than Hyjal trash by my understanding.

However, there is one thing in WotLK which is a major factor that we didn't have before, diminishing returns. The more we stack avoidance, the less we get from it. This will stop avoidance tanks unless the new equipment for later tiers has huge amounts of avoidance.

It is going to be a balancing issue with everyone having their own prefered way of equiping/gemming/enchanting. I have always been an avoidance fan, but I guess future equipment and DR will dictate what is and isn't a sensible gearing choice for each of us individually.

Barathorn
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BV also greatly increases our TPS.

the fact is : we do not really choose the stats on items.

the other fact is : you can choose gems, and there's no BV/BR gems (I won't socket with str gems).

this said, and knowing that the effectiveness of BV/BR is inversely proportionnal to the hits we're taking, the best thing to my understanding is still to wander around the raid content with 2 stuffs on your bags.

I have a stuff with 1.7K BV unbuff, slightly less life, not quite def capped, far less real avoidance, and another one with 300 less BV, but 560Def, 29K HP, 25% dodge and 19% parry.

it's just about changing it depending on what you're tanking.

no, that is not real.

It's just about NOT FORGETTING to change it before OTing patchwerk.



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Akadurgrim (Ysondre EU) <Wild>
Tankadin/healadin/retadin

I've never been a fan of avoidance tanks, since it's unreliable. You'll get attacked so often during fights, that there will always be those streams of hits where you are just unlucky and don't avoid them. The avoidance tanks will have less of these than other tanks, but will still have them, and is still required to survive them. Other tanks spent their itemization on EH instead, and while they will receive more streaks of hits, they're better made at surviving them.

Block Value affects EH, and applies in a worst case scenario. Avoidance does not.
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Zoe's guide to building your tankadin

Not all future bosses will hit harder than current bosses. Look at Morogrim: He hits for 3-5k, but he hits fast. Magtheridon, by comparison, hits for about 6k, but slower. Morogrim would deal considerably less damage than Magtheridon to a paladin tank with the way our blocks work.

Hell, that's a trend that you see a lot in previous content. Most of the tier 5 bosses didn't really hit any harder than the harder hitting tier 4 bosses. The real damage in those fights came from other aspects of the fight (orbs/pound on Void Reaver, whirlwind on Leotheras, flame patches and adds on Al'ar, pyroblast and other attacks on Kael'thas).

I think Block Rating and Block Value will continue to be very important in tier 8 and beyond.
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Belloc

Alright...I've gotten some good replies...the conclusions I've come to:

Block rating: Always good before the block cap, you get a lot of "free" block value from Str, and being hit capped gives some very nice mitigation, even if you don't have any block value on your gear, and even on a hard hitting boss. And your block value will naturally increase as you gear up from Str (And from the block value naturally on your shield).


Block value: a highly sensationally useful stat on your gear, it's usefulness fluctuates a lot with different encounters. A cloak has 50 block value: Against a mob hitting 5K that's a nice 1% mitigation, but on a boss that hits for 15K it's a mere 0.33% mitigation. This variability makes it a very hard stat to gear for, in anything but a secondary block value set.

In TBC I was able to reach block cap without any block rating on my gear. I'll probably head down that same path, however I will take tier pieces this time that have block rating on them. Last time I avoided them like the plague.
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