This is just something that meerly i never understood why it was done in such a way from the start of this game.

But why does block not block all dmg? i mean cmon, if you are BLOCKING something with your shield, then you arnt getting hurt hence the BLOCK.

Just always bothered me.

And who else thinks block in general should be reworked?

Mostly for flavor, I assume. Pre-BC, if you blocked a special, it did 0 damage, but regular melee hits worked the same way they work now. If it went back to being 0 damage, it would just be another form of avoidance which is bleh imo. Block is better off being a form of mitigation. Perhaps it needs some balance tweaks to make it more attractive on bosses that swing for 25k, but it doesn't need to made into dodge and parry.

not really a point of changing it, its just im confused the logic that came up with the idea of blocks not blocking.

The way blocks work is as if you blocked and the weapon slid down the shield and hit ya in the leg or something.

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Q u o t e:
not really a point of changing it, its just im confused the logic that came up with the idea of blocks not blocking.

The way blocks work is as if you blocked and the weapon slid down the shield and hit ya in the leg or something.

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Think of it like being shot while wearing a bullet-proof vest. Yes, the vest blocks the bullet from penetrating your chest and causing serious damage, but the impact leaves one HELL of a bruise.

Ok, so lets practice this....

You hold up a shield, and I'll come running at you with a big sledgehammer and hit your shield. Do you think you'll fully absorb the incoming damage?

Here's what I wanna know.

Why can't we block magic?

I'm pretty damn sure my shield is at least somewhat capable of deflecting a portion of a fireball away from me and protecting me from harm to some extent.

...

Technically, that makes more sense than blocking only part of a melee hit.

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Q u o t e:
Here's what I wanna know.

Why can't we block magic?

I'm pretty damn sure my shield is at least somewhat capable of deflecting a portion of a fireball away from me and protecting me from harm to some extent.

...

Technically, that makes more sense than blocking only part of a melee hit.

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Because any competent mage will be able to get the fireball to angle around your shield and whack you in the back of your head.

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Q u o t e:

Block was a fine stat back when bosses could do Crushing Blows. In their absence, it does feel like it has slipped as a source of mitigation. We (the developers and the community) were worried at the launch of Lich King that block would make warriors the best tanks, paladins second, and everyone else far behind. In retrospect we should have been more focused on the cooldowns and number of hits a tank could take in a row.

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This is true for heroics though. Simply buffing block up by 100% might possibly balance it against DK armor, but would absolutely trivialize heroics.

Actually, DKs did take some really spiky damage in heroics at the start, so you guys did get it right in a way.

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Q u o t e:
Traditionally, bosses hit almost entirely through physical damage and then occasionally threw in a big magical hit. The magical hits were scary because they couldn't be blocked and went through armor, so the only things you could do about them was burn a cooldown or heal like crazy. Fortunately the magical attacks cannot crit so at least the damage, while large, could be predictable.

Block was a fine stat back when bosses could do Crushing Blows. In their absence, it does feel like it has slipped as a source of mitigation. We (the developers and the community) were worried at the launch of Lich King that block would make warriors the best tanks, paladins second, and everyone else far behind. In retrospect we should have been more focused on the cooldowns and number of hits a tank could take in a row.

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Does this imply that Block is in for some changes in the near future?

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Q u o t e:
Traditionally, bosses hit almost entirely through physical damage and then occasionally threw in a big magical hit. The magical hits were scary because they couldn't be blocked and went through armor, so the only things you could do about them was burn a cooldown or heal like crazy. Fortunately the magical attacks cannot crit so at least the damage, while large, could be predictable.

Block was a fine stat back when bosses could do Crushing Blows. In their absence, it does feel like it has slipped as a source of mitigation. We (the developers and the community) were worried at the launch of Lich King that block would make warriors the best tanks, paladins second, and everyone else far behind. In retrospect we should have been more focused on the cooldowns and number of hits a tank could take in a row.

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I'm glad you realize how things stand at the moment. It is important to emphasize that desparity in cooldowns will generally trump desparity in effective health. This is why DKs are preferable to druids, even though druids can have more EH if they are both geared toward EH. Warriors are also preferable to paladins, despite paladins having more EH.

Warriors and paladins are of couse worse at damage intensive assignments like Steelbreaker or General than the other two tanks, but do have their uses.

Plate with block on it is much worse for filling the loot table with shards, than leather designed for tanking would be. DK's can't use Block at all, and most informed Pally/Warriors just don't want it on grounds of it not protecting them from bosses as well as dodge or stam do.

Shards.

Now consider tanking leather - It's not as though rogues don't use agility, or want haste/penetration rather than agility/hit/expertise in every one of their specs. That just happens to be what you give them on everything under the sun.

Hell, even if the rogues wouldn't take 'that bad tank leather item' because they've spent hours theorycrafing their perfect Armor Pen+Haste set, the Warriors and Ret Pallies would pounce on it. Yes, I've seen ret pallies that considered leather some of their best upgrades.

AP/Hit/Agility/Expertise and a non-downgrade amount of Stam are all perfectly reasonable stats to put on tank-oriented leather that rogues would use too, but that sort of item doesn't get made. For no reason, other than perhaps Blizzard is too gun shy to alter the over-loaded feral talents yet again. We're balanced as a class by being given only bad item options. Bad items designed to make our new Savage Defense Block look less terrible.

That balance holds, until you consider the Arena items and the old staves, which are designed with our more effective stats, and are often the best gear, even though Furious gear wastes item budget on Resilience.

So if you hate block plate for being sub optimal, you know what, at least you don't face that issue on all your gear like a druid tank.

Coming up again even worse next arena season, unless you want to get on fixing it there Blizz...

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Q u o t e:
We (the developers and the community) were worried at the launch of Lich King that block would make warriors the best tanks, paladins second, and everyone else far behind.

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Really?

Keep in mind I never played a Paladin past 40ish, but, I always thought they were the better 'block' tanks and warriors were more of a balanced mix of dodge parry block.

I mean, I know my own block value, and when I stack my gear for it it can be pretty darn high, but I just can't get my chance to actually block as high as a Paladin's Holy Shield can with the same amount of uptime...

I'm not looking to start a 'best block tank' contest, I'm just kinda surprised by that statement. Although I guess in a short fight, with Shield Block being 100% block chance for 10 secs...I can sort of see it. It sure saved my bacon a few times when I was starting Heroics and barely managing.

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Q u o t e:
back when bosses could do Crushing Blows. In their absence, it does feel like it has slipped as a source of mitigation.

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That's why you gave Druids a gimpy low-damage "block"! Nice!

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Q u o t e:
AP/Hit/Agility/Expertise and a non-downgrade amount of Stam are all perfectly reasonable stats to put on tank-oriented leather that rogues would use too, but that sort of item doesn't get made.
....
So if you hate block plate for being sub optimal, you know what, at least you don't face that issue on all your gear like a druid tank.

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Ozing!

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Q u o t e:
In retrospect we should have been more focused on the cooldowns and number of hits a tank could take in a row.

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That's pretty scary to read. But better late than never.

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Q u o t e:
Really?

Keep in mind I never played a Paladin past 40ish, but, I always thought they were the better 'block' tanks and warriors were more of a balanced mix of dodge parry block.

I mean, I know my own block value, and when I stack my gear for it it can be pretty darn high, but I just can't get my chance to actually block as high as a Paladin's Holy Shield can with the same amount of uptime...

I'm not looking to start a 'best block tank' contest, I'm just kinda surprised by that statement. Although I guess in a short fight, with Shield Block being 100% block chance for 10 secs...I can sort of see it. It sure saved my bacon a few times when I was starting Heroics and barely managing.

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I think it might be Critical Block that makes Warriors the 'better' block tank.

A Paladin can block every hit, easily. A Warrior, on the other hand, can block most hits (the ones that weren't dodged/parried/missed) and of those hits could often block for a larger amount.

EDIT: Oh, and to the OP. The reason 'Blocking' doesn't reduce an attack to 0 is because a large portion of the force is still going into the arm holding the shield. You're not just deflecting the blow away with your shield, though that is a small part of it.

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Q u o t e:
This is just something that meerly i never understood why it was done in such a way from the start of this game.

But why does block not block all dmg? i mean cmon, if you are BLOCKING something with your shield, then you arnt getting hurt hence the BLOCK.

Just always bothered me.

And who else thinks block in general should be reworked?

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In DAoC, not only did block block all damage, those specced enough into shields could block for an adjacent ally.

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Q u o t e:

I think it might be Critical Block that makes Warriors the 'better' block tank.

A Paladin can block every hit, easily. A Warrior, on the other hand, can block most hits (the ones that weren't dodged/parried/missed) and of those hits could often block for a larger amount.

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Even if Blocking was "Fixed" to be a percentage or something similiar, Paladins would still be the better tank if something wasn't changed. Critical block is itself a weakness, because it's designed around the idea that "warriors don't block everything, but when they do block sometimes they block more". It sounds good on paper, in theory paladins block everything, we block ~half of the unavoided hits but sometimes get double blocks from Shield block and critical block. At the end of the day we block almost the same amount.

The flaw in this reasoning is that in a "fixed" block world, a warrior's damage intake would be incredibly spiky. Sometimes they would block nothing. Sometimes they would block. Sometimes they would critical block/shield block for twice the block. Sometimes they'd get both critical block and shield block at the same time. Healers hate this sort of thing, it's why Druids weren't all that popular in TBC; they had great mitigation and avoidance but those random crushing blocks made their health pools spiky and sent healers into fits trying to use cooldowns to react to sudden spikes in damage.

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Q u o t e:


In DAoC, not only did block block all damage, those specced enough into shields could block for an adjacent ally.

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DAoC != WoW

"But why does block not block all dmg? i mean cmon, if you are BLOCKING something with your shield, then you arnt getting hurt hence the BLOCK. "

If you want to look at it from a "realistic" (or fantasy rp) point of view, imagine how your arm and shoulder feels like if you shield block a massive blow. Quite a few arms are broken that way...

Just imagine that jarring force being transferred through the shield to your arm being the part of the damage you don't block ;P