Patch 4.0.3a comes with a few important changes for paladin tanks, outlined below:
Divine Bulwark: Now increases your chance to block melee attacks by 18% (up from 16%). Each point of Mastery increases block chance by an additional 2.25% (up from 2%).
Holy Shield: Now increases the amount your shield blocks by 10% (changed from +15% block chance)
What does this mean?
Short answer is that it makes block cap harder to obtain, given the loss of 15% from the old holy shield. However we do gain (2 + (0.25 * points of mastery))% chance to block, which will help cover the gap a little bit. So at 80, it will still be very possible to reach block cap. It is also worth noting that given the block changes, you will nearly always gain more avoidance from reforging away dodge or parry to mastery. At 85 this math will change slightly, so there will be more updates as we get closer to that point.
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MASTERY AND BLOCK
What is it?
Blizzard wrote:Here’s how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you’ll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree -- meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear.
One of our primary goals with Mastery is to give players more flexibility to choose fun or utility-oriented talents rather than make them feel obligated to pick up “mandatory” but uninteresting talents, such as passive damage or healing. (For examples of the kinds of powerful but boring talents we’re talking about, take a look at the talent tier just above the 51-point talent in many of the existing trees.) In a sense, Mastery makes it so every talent in (just for example) a rogue tree essentially has an invisible additional bullet point that says “…and increases your damage by X%.” This way, if you choose a talent like Master of Deception (which reduces your chance to be detected while stealthed) or Fleet Footed (which affects movement), you won’t feel like you’re giving up damage in exchange for utility.
Simply put, mastery is a system of passive bonuses 'awarded' to a player upon selection of a talent tree specialization. One of these bonuses will provide an effect completely unique to the talent branch of the class it belongs to. For us protection paladins, our mastery is Divine Bulwark. (explained more below). It is worth noting that you must train mastery from your class trainer before being able to benefit from it.
Divine Bulwark (Protection Paladin Mastery) in 4.0.3a
Wowhead wrote:increases your chance to block melee attacks by 18%. Each point of Mastery increases block chance by an additional 2.25%
At level 80 (on ptr 4.0.1) it takes 45.9 mastery rating to gain 1 point of mastery. This means that for every 45.9 mastery you have from gear either by gear stats, reforging, socket bonuses, etc, you will gain 2.25% more block chance through Divine Bulwark.
Block Changes with 4.0.1
WowWiki wrote:As of Cataclysm the mechanics behind block will be changed dramatically. Instead of blocking a flat amount of damage you will then always block 30% of the damage, with block rating still defining how often you will block.
A blocked attack will now be mitigated by a static percentage (30%) instead of an amount modified by your block value, which was the old system.
Holy Shield Changes with 4.0.3a
Holy Shield now increases the amount your shield blocks by 10%. This means that when holy shield is up, our blocks will mitigate 40% of incoming physical damage (can also be modified by +BV meta)
REFORGING
Credit to Polonadis:
As we all know, when patch 4.0.1 hits the live servers, a new feature - reforging will become available. This service provided by NPCs located in every major city allows us to chage 40% of an unwanted or less desirable stat into one we need provided that it is not yet present on the given item. Base stats cannot be reforged, though, with the exception of spirit.
It sounds pretty simple in theory, but can prove more difficult to master in practice. So how should we - prot paladins - use this featire to maximize the potential of our character?
First we need a little bit of theory. (See "Defensive Statistics Theory" below)
Reforging as it relates to Tankadins
Reforging can only be performed with secondary stats; The secondary stats relevant to tanking are Hit, Expertise, Dodge, Parry, and Mastery. (You could also include critical strike rating and haste rating, but that;s another thread altogether - I'll let Meloree handle that one). So why would we want to reforge? Reforging is a tool to fine tune your gearsets to better suit your needs. Beyond the obvious reforging of hit/expertise to reach their respective caps for threat and dps, we can perform other reforging to fine tune our avoidance to exactly where we want it to be. For patch 4.0.3a and Cataclysm in general, reforging avoidance (dodge/parry) to mastery will almost always yield a reduction in damage taken. Let me elaborate:
Defensive Statistics Theory & the Block Cap
Dodge/Parry Diminishing Returns
Both dodge and parry ratings suffer from diminishing returns which means that the more of the given stat we accumulate, the less effective it becomes at providing the stat (it requires more and more rating per point). The same rule applies to dodge gained through agility (the curve starts at about 0,02% dodge per point of agility), and to parry gained through strength (patch 4.0.1 introduced the formula that gives us a flat number of 0,25 parry rating per every point of strength we gain - base strength excluded).
The current (4.0.3a) Derevations for dodge and parry DR points are calculated below by theckhd. Calculated points are "break-even" points where reforging dodge/parry [below the relevant point] to mastery will yield you more theoretical damage taken.
theckhd wrote:H = hit size
A = Avoidance
B = Block
Damage taken = H(1-A-B)+0*A + 0.6*H*B = H(1-A-0.4*B)
Now trade avoidance dA for block dB:
DT'=H(1-(A-dA)-0.4*(B+dB))
Diff=DT'-DT=H-HA+HdA-0.4HB+0.4HdB-H+HA+0.4HB = H(dA-0.4*dB)
Thus, you take less damage if the avoidance you lose is less than 0.4 times the block% you gain.
Assume 10 of each stat. Mastery is fixed at 179.28 rating per point of mastery, and each point gives us 2.25% block. 10 mastery therefore gives us 0.12550%% block, and we'd need 10 parry to give us less than 0.05020 avoidance for the trade to be worthwhile.
According to the MATLAB model, that occurs when you have 942 parry rating (5.139%), or 10.139% parry on your character sheet. At level 80 it's only 234 rating (4.997%), still around 10%.
It's the same calculation for dodge, but we have slightly more base dodge at level 80 (5.5182% with base AGI included) and slightly less at 85 (3.9705% with base AGI). So at 85, it would be 8.9705% dodge, and at 80 it would be 10.5182%.
"Block Cap" - What is it?
Being "block capped" means that you will block every melee hit that is not avoided by a dodge or parry. The block cap is at 102,4% and is the sum of dodge, parry, opponent's miss chance and our block chance. We get about 36% of combined block chance and avoidance for "free" : 5% base block chance + 16% block from mastery, 5% miss and approximately 5% dodge (depending on race - base agility). This means that we need about 66,4% of combined block chance and avoidance from gear to reach the block cap.
Useful in-game macro for avoidance:
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/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage to be capped. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5))
It is worth noting here that certain buffs will affect your total avoidance. As of 4.0.1/4.0.3a these buffs are:
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- Kings/Mark of the Wild
- Horn of Winter / Battle Shout
- Agility/Strength Food
- Blessing of Light, from last word
Irrelevant buffs are not listed, such as DBW procs or DC:G procs, because it is assumed for this thread that you will be using tank relevant items. Overall these buffs will give you roughly 3-4% more avoidance, though the exact gain will change from character to character. It is important to factor these buffs in when trying to reach block cap, as it can be assumed you will have them in a raid setting.
So what should you reforge?
As of cataclysm it is impossible to reach block cap, even with current raiding gear. While this will probably change as we progress further into the cataclysm tiers, for now the best thing you can do for survivability is reforge to mastery. You can safely reforge dodge, parry, or threat stats to mastery down quite low and still be gaining more mitigation through mastery. It is somewhat important to note that prioritizing the block cap in your reforging efforts may limit your tps output. Reaching the block cap will likely require the reforging of most of your gear pieces, leaving little room to reforge for hit/expertise if you don't have the right gear. In cataclysm, having a very low hit% is a given, especially in lower ilvl gear.
While some will choose to reforge for hit and expertise, My raiding experiences thus far have led me to advise the following: stack mastery in favor of dodge/parry to achieve as much avoidance percentage as you can. This means reforging away your highest stat (dodge/parry) to mastery on every piece of gear that isn't already reforged. Threat stats are almost trivial due to the high tps output we have mid to late fight, and the help of tricks/MD at the start of the fight makes it that much easier. If you maintain a proper rotation threat should only be an issue early in the fight, which is easily aided with tricks, misdirect, and AW.
Thanks for the effort.
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