The actual problem with block isn't "It suck VS bosses" but rather, it doesn't scale.

The failure to scale does 1 major thing. Changes the power level of block depending on the target's swing damage. So it must either be too powerful against weak attacks or not powerful enough against heavy attacks.


What does the change do? It makes block better Where it was already good. Now any instance where wearing block value gear, such as trash tanking, heroics, or PvP block will become even more powerful.

While it remains poor where it was already poor, hard hitting boss tanking. This area is dominated by EH, as shown by players willing to give up mountains of avoidance for molehills of EH. Even with the changes, The best EH peice is still the best peice for the slot. If the best EH peice happens to have SBV on it, then a small buff occurs, but no where near as large a buff as occured in the SBV trash sets.

TL:DR: The doubling of bonus SBV on items has the effect of increasing the power gap block has. You have made block notably more powerful in low end or weak hitting content, while resulting in no significant change in high end content.

Just wait for the PVP/BG tears.

>.<
Impale spec + SBV gear is OP.
Last weekend i tested it for lols.
I can't wait for 3.2
:D
It will get nerfed as 12k shield slams will be frowned upon.
I'll be on the PTR tonite, and will see the difference will be.
onlive my best crit was 9k i think in a bg with a low resil mage.
Resil will have a huge factor in 3.2 with 20% reduction. But should be fun.


Raid wise: Blockvalue is still meh untill they remove the RNG of block.
Sure we may get hit for crit block for 6k less, but when we don't for back to back hits, if we die, block is still average at best! Even the new 4set won't help, we need to be able to achieve eliminate the back to back gip that has cost me to many times in ulduar to be a successfull tank. Thorim, Freya and Council have all 2 shot me with back to back non-block hits.

Block is and will be meh untill they bring back the 6second CD that with good avoidence AND block, we were able to keep it high, untill that is back, block is %*#%. Sorry GC, RnG gods will always have a chance at 2 shoting me.

GC, i think he is referring to: that unlike armor which negates more damage the bigger the hit is, block does not scale based on incoming damage because it is a static amount.

So yes he is using a different definition of "scaling" than they one you proposed.

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Q u o t e:


You're going to have to explain this better. Scaling is generally defined as continually improving with gear once you are at max level (because below max level, increasing ranks takes care of it). Does block improve as your gear improves? Well, yes it does. You get more block rating on items and you get more block value on items. Your Strength also improves, which improves your block value. Here is an example of block not scaling: In Naxx 25 gear, you block 25% of the time for 400 damage blocked. In Ulduar 25, you block 25% of the time for 400 damage blocked.

You can argue that block doesn't mitigate enough, which is an argument you could probably justify. I don't understand how it doesn't scale unless you are using a different definition of the word than I am used to.

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GC, the best tank gear does not have block value on it.

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Q u o t e:

You can argue that block doesn't mitigate enough, which is an argument you could probably justify. I don't understand how it doesn't scale unless you are using a different definition of the word than I am used to.

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In terms of the % it reduces from a boss's attack, I'm assuming.

1000 against a 2k hit is 50% mitigation, 1250 against a 20k hit is 6.25%.

The amount you block scales upwards with gear, the percent it takes off of a hit does not.

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Q u o t e:
You can argue that block doesn't mitigate enough, which is an argument you could probably justify. I don't understand how it doesn't scale unless you are using a different definition of the word than I am used to.

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He probably means it doesn't scale based on the amount of incoming damage, like armor does. He's just commenting on how it's not % based.

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Q u o t e:


You're going to have to explain this better. Scaling is generally defined as continually improving with gear once you are at max level (because below max level, increasing ranks takes care of it). Does block improve as your gear improves? Well, yes it does. You get more block rating on items and you get more block value on items. Your Strength also improves, which improves your block value. Here is an example of block not scaling: In Naxx 25 gear, you block 25% of the time for 400 damage blocked. In Ulduar 25, you block 25% of the time for 400 damage blocked.

You can argue that block doesn't mitigate enough, which is an argument you could probably justify. I don't understand how it doesn't scale unless you are using a different definition of the word than I am used to.

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I think what he means is that block needs to block a percentage of dmg rather than a set amount.

(number made up to highlight point)
Current
If I have 1000BV and get hit for 10000....I take 9000 dmg (10% reduction)
If I have 1000BV and get hit for 100000....I take 99000 dmg (1% reduction)

Scaling BV
If I have 1000BV and get hit for 10000....I take 9000 dmg (10% reduction)
If I have 1000BV and get hit for 100000....I take 90000 dmg (10% reduction)

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Q u o t e:
Just wait for the PVP/BG tears.

>.<
Impale spec + SBV gear is OP.
Last weekend i tested it for lols.
I can't wait for 3.2
:D
It will get nerfed as 12k shield slams will be frowned upon.
I'll be on the PTR tonite, and will see the difference will be.
onlive my best crit was 9k i think in a bg with a low resil mage.
Resil will have a huge factor in 3.2 with 20% reduction. But should be fun.


Raid wise: Blockvalue is still meh untill they remove the RNG of block.
Sure we may get hit for crit block for 6k less, but when we don't for back to back hits, if we die, block is still average at best! Even the new 4set won't help, we need to be able to achieve eliminate the back to back gip that has cost me to many times in ulduar to be a successfull tank. Thorim, Freya and Council have all 2 shot me with back to back non-block hits.

Block is and will be meh untill they bring back the 6second CD that with good avoidence AND block, we were able to keep it high, untill that is back, block is %*#%. Sorry GC, RnG gods will always have a chance at 2 shoting me.

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The more I think about <=TBC block, the more I think it would be better if the mechanics of the shield block ability should be like old school WoW. Despite the changes to crushing blows, paladins still get it and the RNG on critical blocks doesn't make up for the fact the boss can whack you with no chance of deciding to mitigate it with block or not... Yeah, the 3.0 block changes now confuses me.

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Q u o t e:


You're going to have to explain this better. Scaling is generally defined as continually improving with gear once you are at max level (because below max level, increasing ranks takes care of it). Does block improve as your gear improves? Well, yes it does. You get more block rating on items and you get more block value on items. Your Strength also improves, which improves your block value. Here is an example of block not scaling: In Naxx 25 gear, you block 25% of the time for 400 damage blocked. In Ulduar 25, you block 25% of the time for 400 damage blocked.

You can argue that block doesn't mitigate enough, which is an argument you could probably justify. I don't understand how it doesn't scale unless you are using a different definition of the word than I am used to.

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He (she?) means scale relative to the size of the attack. Like armor, base mitigation percentages or even AP debuffs.

What he's saying is that by increasing BV by a small amount (I've seen estimates around 200-500), you make us even more OP against small hitters (trash and heroics) while not really improving our chances against large hitters.

Take Ignis adds vs Ignis himself. The adds hit for about 4,500. Take that to 4,000 = 11.1% decrease in damage. Ignis hits for 25k (rough guess). Take that to 24,500 = 2% decrease in damage. Which sounds okay, but but we still can't live through 2 back-to-back hits without a heal, and 500 damage is well within the standard variation of a swing and/or a heal anyway. So the argument is that the buff will be OP against adds, a slight buff in terms of overall damage in a raid, but not even noticeable when you talk about TTL.

I think it's been pretty well explained already, but people have neglected to mention avoidance, which works on a percentage like armor. Armor always absorbs the same percent of dmg, miss/parry/dodge always avoid the same percent of dmg(ignoring the slight scaling against lvl 80 versus lvl 83). Block is a large percentage against weak hitting opponents, but a small percentage against raid bosses. It does "scale" with gear, but not with encounter difficulty.

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Q u o t e:


In terms of the % it reduces from a boss's attack, I'm assuming.

1000 against a 2k hit is 50% mitigation, 1250 against a 20k hit is 6.25%.

The amount you block scales upwards with gear, the percent it takes off of a hit does not.

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A 5k Fireball on a 12k health mob takes 41.6% of it's health.

A 7k Fireball on a 4 million health mob takes 0.175% of it's health.

But that Fireball still scaled.

You can't compare 1 thing to 2 different things and say it didn't scale.

A 213 iLvL tank takes a certain amount of damage from Heroic dungeon X.
A 226 iLvL tank takes a certain amount of damage from Heroic dungeon X.

The difference in those two amounts is the "scaling" from 213 to 226. Not the change in damage taken from Naxx to Ulduar.

To test scaling you have to compare against the same thing with different levels of "power".

When you get to something like Vezax, you want something that resembles reliable effective health. Shield blocks on warriors don't get effective health, it's more like a WotN or AD that doesn't even proc on a hit that would take you below some health amount.

@#!# it, that's actually a good idea. I can see the talent tooltip now: "Attacks that take a warrior below 35% are automatically treated as critically blocked attacks.<some internal cooldown>"

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Q u o t e:
You can argue that block doesn't mitigate enough, which is an argument you could probably justify. I don't understand how it doesn't scale unless you are using a different definition of the word than I am used to.

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Sitting on your hands, grinning smugly about all the swarm/flurry/hastened zerg attacks you've built into the new encounters?

>.>

then we can start crying about the Paladins :(

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Q u o t e:
Just wait for the PVP/BG tears.

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I'd be more worried about this if it weren't for how resilience is being changed. I think that while we may see bigger shield slams in pve or farming in BV gear, we're not going to be particularly dangerous in PVP, depending on how rage gain works against this new resilience (will we get as much damage from rage as if they had no resilience or will it take resilience into account) and even if we were, we'd need too much PVE gear to have enough damage reduction against spells and melee attacks, making us plate glass cannons :P.

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Q u o t e:
then we can start crying about the Paladins :(

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We can start crying now if it makes you feel better ;)

BV doesn't need to scale with incoming damage to be useful against bosses.

However, BV does need to come on items that don't have BR to make the items useful.

ITT: Everyone saying the same thing after clicking the Blizzard icon and not reading anything else.

Block scales, but the scaling is such that the mitigation it provides is horrible.

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Q u o t e:
ITT: Everyone saying the same thing after clicking the Blizzard icon and not reading anything else.

Block scales, but the scaling is such that the mitigation it provides is horrible.

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This just in:

Horrible still better than nothing.

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Q u o t e:
BV doesn't need to scale with incoming damage to be useful against bosses.

However, BV does need to come on items that don't have BR to make the items useful.

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Merge block rating and value into one stat...I think that would go a long way to making block gear useful. You could leave the innate BV on shields though if needed.