“Shield Block also grants you 20% reduction to magical damage taken”

On the face of it this sounds absolutely fantastic. However, having looked closer, I’m not so sure. Just taking the tier 8 content into account that I’ve seen so far (ie, everything up to General Vezax), exactly how useful is it?

• Flame Leviathan. You’re in a vehicle. Nothing to see here, move along
• Ignis the Furnace Master – well, there’s Scorch, so it might be useful if you’re an offtank standing in the fire for a long time, but that’s about it
• Razorscale – Useless in phase 1, nice to have in phase 2, but Flame Breath comes too quickly to negate it all the time. So kind of useful, but by the time you have 4 pieces of tier 8, you probably have good enough gear to survive the breaths anyway.
• XT-002 – Pretty much all physical damage, except for bombs, and if you’re getting hit by those you have bigger problems
• Kologarn. Again, all physical damage. Move along, nothing to see
• Assembly of Iron – Fusion Punch was made for the bonus. A nice reduction on an ability which can be reacted to. A decent use for it at last.
• Auriaya – well, if your raid’s doing it right, Sonic Screech will hit for so little as to be trivial. No really good uses here either.
• Hodir – Well, Frozen Blows might count, but odds are that if you’re wearing full frost resistance gear, you don’t have the 4-piece bonus. And if you don’t have full frost gear, you’re likely to be wearing SBV gear (Frozen blows that are completely blocked do no frost damage).
• Thorim – Steadily increasing physical damage. Not really much help
• Freya – Nothing hits very hard, really. I guess it might be useful for holding Exploding Lashers in place, but really, why dice with death when you don’t have to?
• Mimiron – Leviathan Mk2′s Plasma Blast was made for the set bonus. But after that? Maybe to relieve your healers a little in phase 2.
• General Vezax – again, if the tank’s taking magical damage, someone’s doing something wrong.

So, not great, really. In a fit of curiosity I looked over some old Sartharion + 3 drakes log parses to see if it might have been useful there. It definitely wouldn’t help enoughwith main tanking Sarth himself – the breaths come too often for that. For Shadron, Tenebron and Vesperon, maybe, but not a huge amount.

So, yeah, there you go. I wouldn’t say to knock yourself out trying to get the 4-piece warrior tier 8 set bonus, at least not yet anyway. There just aren’t enough practical applications to make it the killer upgrade it might appear to be on first sight.

EDIT: Veneretio points out that the set bonus comes into its own a lot more once you start to attempt some of the hard modes. I can see how that might be the case, but as I’m not yet running hard modes, I’ll wait to see them before completely reversing my opinion. On top of that, not everyone cares too much about hard modes.

For a start, Last Stand is having its cooldown reduced to 3 minutes.  When glyphed with Glyph of Last Stand, this suddenly means that Last Stand could be up all the time. I don’t believe for a second that will be attainable, but by nerfing the glyph to a 2 minute reduction, the minimum I expect to see, we’ll still see the ability available once a minute to boost health by 20% for 20 seconds.

Add to that the new glyph – Glyph of Shield Wall. It’s a similar deal to that of the Last stand glyph:

Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.

When properly talented with Improved Disciplines, Shield Wall too gains a 1 minute cooldown. This suddenly means that the 4-piece set bonus for Tier 7 gear (an extra 3 seconds on Shield Wall) means a lot more than it did.

There are two things that this could mean.

The first is that these are just the first iteration of testing and they’ll be nerfed back down to an appropriate level. Fine, I say. That isn’t too much of a problem – PTRs are for testing, and by making extreme changes and then gradually moving them back to a point where they’re comfortable, Blizzard can be sure to get them to a point at which they’re much better balanced against other tanking trees.

The second, and which has been partially borne out by the Hodir fight on the PTRs (melee strikes of 25k), is that we’ll be seeing a lot more encounters in which we take a lot of damage, like Patchwerk and Brutallus. It will mean that it’s not complete suicide for a warrior to tank an encounter such as Sartharion with all three drakes up. And, most importantly, it will make the decision to use panic buttons so much easier.

Of course, dual specialisation will be our saviour here too. A strict survivability spec might well depend on these two glyphs. Adding a full set of threat glyphs in the second means the choice is always there.

There’s a new shield enchant in town - Titanium Plating. And the question that has been going around my mind is – is it any good, or should I stick with the old favourites of 20 defense rating or even 18 Stamina?

To make the numbers easier, I’m going to make a few assumptions. The “typical” warrior who I’m going to use as my example will have:

• 25000 health
• 20% Dodge
• 20% Parry
• 20% Block
• 1000 Shield Block Value
• No raid buffs, such as Horn of Winter, or Blessing of Kings.
• Talents: 3 / 3 Vitality and Improved Shield Block (Protection warrior, right?)

Let’s look at the easy one first. The 18 Stamina enchant adds 191 health (180+6% from Vitality), leaving a total of 25191 health, an increase of 0.7%. Not that impressive, right? And as we add more health from food buffs, Power Word: Fortitude and Commanding Shout, its comparative value decreases. But for the minute, we’ll call it a 0.7% increase in health.

Now, 20 defense rating. Again, it’s not too hard to work out the benefit of this enchant:

20 defense rating = 4 defense skill (ignoring the remainder). That’s the same as 0.16% dodge, 0.16% parry, 0.16% to miss from the boss and 0.16% block. That’s an additional 0.48% avoidance, plus 0.16% block. That’s almost a half a percent avoidance, plus a 1000 HP reduction in one hit in every 625 – or an average reduction of 1.6HP per hit (ie, 0.16% increase in effective mitigation). While defense rating is subject to diminishing returns too, it scales somewhat more slowly, so as we get to 27000 health or more it’s probably going to be better to take the defense rating – 0.48% avoidance plus 0.16% mitigation sounds good to me.

And, finally, Titanium Plating. This is where it gets tricky:

20% block rating means that, on average, 1 out of 5 attacks will be blocked. So our average increase in health saved will be 40 over 5 attacks, or 8 health per attack.  so that’s a 0.8% increase in average block value. Doesn’t sound so impressive, does it? We’re forgetting one thing, though – shield block. If we assume we keep shield block up as much as possible then for 30s we will see a 0.8% increase in block value, followed by a 10 second period where everything is blocked, for twice the usual shield block value. But because the usual block value doubles as well as the enchant, we can disregard this in terms of percentages. So our new average increase is as follows:

(30s  0.8% increase) + (10s  4%) = average increase of damage reduction - 1.6%

Sounds good? Of course, 1.6% more damage mitigated does, but shield block isn’t necessarily going to be used that way. It might be used to generate extra threat, or as an extra crutch if healing starts to slide slightly. So we can’t assume that it will be up for 10 seconds in every 40. That is merely the absolute best case. And this additional reduction is going to be a much lower percentage of the incoming damage from a boss, who hits hard every 2.5s than it will be from an AoE trash pack which will be constantly beating on you.

Of course, Shield Block Value is also useful for threat, from Damage Shield and Shield Slam. Because our average block value (in the best possible conditions) has increased by 1.6%, so too will our threat from these damaging abilities. A 1.6% increase doesn’t sound much, and at the moment it probably isn’t, but in the future it may well turn out to be useful at higher gear levels, even though by then the percentage will be diminished. It’s also a benefit neither of the other two enchants will grant.

So, which is the better enchant? 18 stamina might have cut the mustard when 15k health unbuffed was the norm for tanks, but it’s starting to show its age. No, both the new enchants are, somewhat unsurprisingly, better. On reflection, I’d rather have the 20 defense on a slow-hitting boss. For AoE trash packs, where keeping up shield block is an excellent passive threat move, the extra threat from the plating wins out. Again, though, as shield block value increases the additional percentage mitigated by the plating is reduced. The higher the gear level, the more valuable the avoidance will be, as it diminishes at a lower rate, being spread across three stats (dodge, parry and miss).

It’s based on a complete misassumption that so many people seem to hold, that Prot soloing is non-viable currently. I’ve no idea who started this thought, but so many people seem to hold it in their heads that they can’t solo as a Protection warrior. All too often I’ve seen warriors on the Isle of Quel’Danas, or elsewhere, laying into mobs, shield in one hand, sword or axe in the other. The only explanation I can think of is that no-one has educated them in how to gear for soloing.

Protection warriors, when soloing (or dpsing), should gear entirely differently to when tanking. It’s OK to be indestructable, but it’s also incredibly dull. No, there are much better ways of doing things, and it disappoints me to think that no-one has ever told these warriors how to not want to kill themselves when they’re not tanking for a group.

When Soloing, Prot warriors should gear to dual wield, with slow weapons in each hand – something like [item]claw of molten fury[/item] in one hand, and [item]fury[/item] in the other. Go for at least 142 hit, but no more than 200, and stack crit and strength. Just hit devastate repeatedly, and use Whirlwind whenever it’s up.

Using such a rotation and gear on bosses I’ve offtanked, I’ve hit over 1000 dps in raids. That’s not too shabby given most of my gear is unenchanted and I almost never have any dps-oriented consumables with me.

Come the patch, the gearing will change somewhat – go for no more than 142 hit, and stack the rest in strength. The incoming Sword and Board talent and changes to shield block value will mean that you will be able to dps effectively with a shield, much better than now.

In one way, it’s a shame that such massive and far-reaching talent changes are needed to dispel the myth that a protection warrior can’t dps. On another, I look forward to no longer having to beat my head against a brick wall when I see someone trying to down a mob with a [item]Shield of Impenetrable Darkness[/item] and a [item]King’s Defender[/item].

Well, maybe, the sword is still probably a bad pick for dps, but it’s still an improvement on before…

2.4.3

This is my “trash” set – it’s the one I wear most often for tanking trash mobs, and is the basis for most other sets, – I swap in different pieces according to the boss. At 519 defense, it’s not too shabby, and decent enough values for avoidance. I don’t gear for block at all – it’s a useless stat as the game (in live!) stands currently.

Let’s look at how the same set of my gear changes once the PTR arrives (incidentally, I’m still making my mind up about the bleach job):

As at patch 3.0.2

I’ve lost nearly 2% avoidance and I’m crittable! Lots more strength, sure, but avoidance is way down, so those hits I do manage to block are going to be less. Unfortunately there’ll be lots more of them. At least crushing blows won’t happen ever again, so the damage I take will be more constant.

How do I plan to fix this? Swap my [item]Praetorian’s legguards[/item] for [item]Sunguard Legplates[/item]. That will help, even though the defense on the latter is being reduced (See MMO-Champion). After that I’ll just have to fiddle till I hit that magical 490. 

I had planned on discussing more, but my PTR time today was limited to 5 minutes as it’s horribly overloaded and I can’t get in again after a crash. So, more discussion coming later.

The encounter, however, brings a lot to the fore, in particular with respect to what’s coming up in the not too distant future with respect to Shield Block and Block Value. At the moment shield block is twice every few seconds, and blocks a small amount of damage. It’s changing to once every 20s (at most) and blocking a lot more. This is important for Reliquary, because for the first phase (2 million damage or so) you get no healing, apart from Last Stand (if you think that counts – it definitely helps). With the incoming changes to block value (you get 250% of block value from strength compared to TBC), suddenly if you have a high block value you’ll take loads less damage from every blocked hit, even if you can’t rely on the blocks happening as often. The entire first phase will suddenly become so much easier.

And it’s here that a thought occurs. What we currently call “passive uncrushable” will be hugely desirable for tanks in Wrath of the Lich King. Every block will block a huge chunk of damage, even more so given the itemization of warrior gear in the expansion toward Strength. I’ll coin a term now – passive defense. As your passive defense (ie what we used to call block plus parry plus dodge plus miss) tends toward 102.4%, the amount of damage you take will fall off rapidly. I won’t go so far as to say that every unblocked attack will have the effect of a crushing blow today, but a slightly lesser version perhaps. Effectively the crushing blows have been removed from the combat table by making every blow crush. Ouch.

And in case you were wondering, yes, all bosses including WoW classic and TBC will lose their ability to crush too – the mechanic is being changed so that only adversaries 4 levels above or more can crush. Bosses are fixed at 3 levels.

One last thing – Blizz, if you’re listening, can I please have a new shield that doesn’t look just like my old one?

No more Crushing Blows. That’s the big implication of what we’re seeing. It’s huge, and it looks like Warriors are being repositioned slightly to be more in the manner that Druids tank now. It’s fair that we’re no longer going to be the primary anti-magic tanks – that’s the Death Knights’ job – and versatility is remaining the name of the game.

The change to Anticipation simultaneously concerns me and excites me – from its current 20 Defense it’s being switched to 5% dodge. That’s a massive increase in the avoidance that it gives, but on the other hand, it’s going to make gear flexibility harder. One of the big reasons I currently have 5/5 anticipation is the extra cushion this gives me to swap in resistance and avoidance gear and still remain uncrittable without resorting to Resilience.

I’m having a hard time imagining what Improved Shield Block is for now – previously an essential talent, I get the impression it’s going to be relegated to the league of useless. My main concern is current bosses with the new talent trees – suddenly I’ll be taking a lot more crushing blows because they are still present on the table and I can’t guarantee to block them. This is concerning, and I hope something is done to current bosses to address this.

A combination of Improved Shield Bash and Shield Mastery are going to make for big Shield Slam crits – just the ticket for keeping threat. Add to that Sword and Board and suddenly Shield Slam is even better for threat than before. I look forward tostrings of Shield Slam crits with this (yeah, yeah, I can dream).

Safeguard puzzles me a lot – yes, it’s going to be something you can do as an offtank to reduce incoming damage, but I’m concerned that encounters are going to be written into the game that require timely use of the ability. Talents shouldn’t be required for any encounter. Similarly Critical Block just doesn’t do anything for me, unless we start getting to 50% block value through gear (and how I don’t want that to happen), and even then it looks like a rage starvation opportunity more than anything else.

Finally we have Shockwave. It’s nice, an upgraded Concussion Blow, but I do wonder how often I’ll actually use it. One of those “Oh, $£%!” talents, I guess.

I’ll leave you with this build, which I’m pondering for when WoW 3.0 comes out, most likely a month or so before the expansion. I should mention I’m planning on levelling as Protection, and probably ending up with something like this.

There are ways to minimise crushing blows, though, and they don’t rely on any particular gear or stat, unless of course you count a shield (and, hell, the shield you get when you start at level one would do if you really wanted to challenge your healers).

Let’s start by establishing that the most frequent swing timer for a boss’s attack is 2s. Some have higher, some, especially dual-wielding bosses like Prince Malchezzar, will have lower. But in the general case you’ll be mostly facing up to attacks that come every two seconds. And every attack has the base 15% chance to crush.

For the purposes of this example I’m going to ignore parry-accelerated swings, because they’ll obviously use up shield block charges and therefore my method isn’t infallible. It does help, though.

I’ll use a brief combat log as an example:

00:00:00.00 Namthe gains Shield Block

00:00:00.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)

00:00:02.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)

00:00:02.50 Namthe's Shield Block Fades

00:00:04.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 6000 (crushing)

00:00:05.00 Namthe gains Shield Block

Now, Thunder Clap reduces the boss’s swing speed by 10%. So if I assume the boss has been debuffed with Thunder Clap, the combat log will look like:

00:00:00.00 Namthe gains Shield Block

00:00:00.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)

00:00:02.70 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)

00:00:02.70 Namthe's Shield Block Fades

00:00:04.90 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 6000 (crushing)

00:00:05.00 Namthe gains Shield Block

The swing timer’s slowed down, but not enough to stop me taking a crushing blow. Obviously for the same duration fight, I’ll take less damage, but I’ll still get crushed. However, this is where Improved Thunder clap comes in. I’ll again go over the combat log, and this time I’ve talented for 3/3 Improved Thunder Clap.

00:00:00.00 Namthe gains Shield Block

00:00:00.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)

00:00:02.90 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)

00:00:02.90 Namthe's Shield Block Fades

00:00:05.00 Namthe gains Shield Block

00:00:05.30 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)

Suddenly that third crushing blow has been blocked, because we’ve slowed it down enough that it hits after we could reapply Shield Block. Obviously with a 5-second cooldown on shield block and the swing timer incerased to 2.4, there’s still a 0.2s window where crushing blows are possible. However, it’s a much-reduced window of opportunity.

So:

• Without Thunderclap, you will be vulnerable to crushing blows 20% of the time
• With Thunderclap, that window shrinks to 12% of the time
• With 3/3 Improved Thunderclap, it shrinks even further to a staggering 4% of the time

Let’s not beat about the bush here, you will still be vulnerable to crushing blows, especially on a fast-hitting, dual-wielding boss, but even then the extra 10% increase in attack speed is massive.

If you don’t want to take the talent, you should probably be having words with your off-tank to persuade him to take it. Your healers will thank you enormously.

It’s well known that to avoid crushing blows entirely, the sum of miss, dodge, parry and block percentages must be greater than 102.4%. It’s also well known that bosses which can crush, have a 15% crush rate, and that if an attack is blocked, it cannot be a crushing blow.

However, what’s not widely understood is what passive block rating does to the chance you will be crushed. And the answer is this: nothing at all. That’s not quite true, but the chances of being crushed remain the same until you reach greater than 87.4% miss, dodge, parry and block.

Let’s work through some examples, and assume a warrior has 25% dodge, 20% parry, 20% block and a 10% chance to be missed. He will also not be using shield block. I’m going to simplify things somewhat by ignoring the extra 2.4% you’d need against bosses, and assuming that the goal is 100% rather than 102.4%.

So, in 100 attacks:

• 10 will miss him
• 25 will be dodged
• 20 will be parried
• 20 will hit and be blocked
• 10 will hit and not be blocked
• 15 will hit and crush

So, let’s add some more passive block to the warrior, and let’s see how much this changes things. He now has 30% block, but all the other stats remain the same. So we have our 100 attacks again:

• 10 will miss him
• 25 will be dodged
• 20 will be parried
• 30 will hit and be blocked
• 15 will hit and crush

What we see is that the same number of crushing blows will land. The only difference is in how many hits we block (and the damage reduction from that). We need at least 31% block before we see any reduction in the number of incoming crushing blows.

So for raid bosses who will typically hit for 6-7k, your block is merely reducing the amount of damage taken from normal hits by maybe 500 damage. Useful but not that useful. Yes, the 500 points might save you, but if your healers are awake it’s not going to help that much.

Of course, in other circumstances block rating is desirable, such as when AoE tanking with a shield spike. The rest of the time, it doesn’t make enough difference to be worth stacking. It’s an all-or-nothing stat.