Questions about Combat Tables, ratings and other things.

So, finally got up my gear to a state where i feel comfortable going into the raiding environment. But, I have a few questions now on my set up and on some of the things being discusses in other threads here.

1. Combat Table: I keep hearing people talking about the combat table and pushing damage off of it. What is the formula for this? Is this the new block cap that we had to deal with in BC to avoid crushing blows? I can't seem to find a good thread to look up to understand this better.

2. Reforging, Hit/Mastery and Me: I have dabbled a bit into reforging, but i seem to be not quite comfortable with it. I took the advice in a different thread to check out askmrrobot.com to see how to optimize my gear. But, it seemed to drop all my hit into mastery with a few other changes. But, if i were to take that advice I would be going well below hit cap which would seem to be detrimental to my threat and ability to generate holy power.

Thanks for any help you all can give me. I'm sure I'll have more questions as I get more answers.
-Prot

p.s. here is my link at askmrrobot
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/usa/ ... o013B5s220
Armory Link
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/k ... t/advanced
http://armorylite.com/us/korgath/prot

Please read deeper on this site as most of the information you want is in here.

Combat table gives the result of the random roll for any given melee attack. To use the analogy of a table-top game, the boss rolls his dice to see if he hits you. We work on a "one-roll" system, which means one roll determines both hit/miss and whether the hit was dodged/parried/blocked.

The table looks something like:
Miss
Dodge/Parry
Block
Hit
Crit

As we fill up that combat table with avoidance/block, the remainder that is "hit" becomes smaller and smaller, until at 102.4% miss + dodge + parry + block, the chance to be "hit" shrinks to 0, or "falls off the table".

Dodge and parry both suffer from diminishing returns. The more you get of them, the less each additional point gives you. Block, in the form of mastery, does not. This makes mastery by far the cheapest stat to use to fill up the combat table.

When we block an attack, we reduce it by 40%. So block is only 40% as effective at stopping incomming damage as dodge or parry. However, we get a lot of block % per point of mastery rating so it makes up for that.

Prevailing tank philosophy says you should eliminate the chance of taking a full hit, then worry about dodge/parry. This is referred to as "combat table coverage" or CTC.

As this pertains to reforging, you want to maximise your mastery. If a piece does not have mastery on it, then reforge what it does have for mastery. Weakest stats for us are haste and crit, followed by expertise and hit. So if you have a piece with haste and hit, reforge the haste to mastery.

If you have a piece with dodge and parry, have a look at your character sheet to see how your dodge and parry relate to one another. Ideally, you want parry to be about 1% ahead of dodge due to the way diminishing returns works. So if your dodge is .5% behind parry, then reforge some dodge to mastery. If parry is too high relative to dodge, reforge the parry to mastery.

Remember your trinkets - the only gear without mastery should be your stam trinket if you use one. They often have a lot, so can throw out the dodge/parry balance once reforged.

When reforging, always save your dodge & parry pieces for last, so that you can balance them appropriately.

Basic Training 101: The Attack Table

Cataclysm Gear Guide

I'm locking this thread because the attack table issue, if there are follow-up questions, should go in the Basic Training forum, and the survival vs. threat gearing question, if there are follow-up questions, should go in one of the existing threads in this forum. Feel free to ask follow-up questions in the right places and people will be happy to help!