An Idea on How One Could Solve the Debate Over Avoidance

[Zarc]

Greetings all, please read and comment on what I have to say. My idea may or may not suck. You be the judge - you comment!

The topic:
Recently there has been alot of debate over Druid avoidance compared to other tanks at the official forums. Discussions back and forth about adding parry to the avoidance arsenal has been suggested and discussed.

While reflecting over this issue yesterday I had sort of an appiffany about how one could solve this problem (and many seems to believe it is a problem) without changing the current itemization or gear focus for Druids. My idea would only require some programming and development by the employees of Blizzard Entertainment and perhaps a bit of tweaking with the armor contribution and health increasing numbers of the Dire Bear Form.

If this idea was thought of and debated over earlier I apologize for being repetative. Although I myself have never heard of or thought about solving the issue in this way before I thought of it myself yesterday.

Before I go on and reviel my solution to the issue I'd like to just lay the foundation and tell you how I believe things work today, and please correct me if I am wrong somewhere.

Theory:
Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights use 3 avoidance stats that prevents all the damage from the avoided blow to damage them. These 3 stats are Parry, Dodge and Miss.

Druids use 1 avoidance stat that prevents all the damage from the avoided blow to damage them. This stat is Dodge. Even though I assume Druids can be missed, they do not "use" miss per se. Because Druids do not use Defense (other than Base Defense), so any misses on the Druid will be because of the mob, not because the Druid has any "decreased chance to be hit" from Defense above Base Defense (400).

In addition to avoidance stats that prevents all the damage from the avoided blow to land, Warriors and Paladins use Block to reduce the damage from a certain blow.

Death Knights and Druids do not have an equivalence to block.

Now. Reading the above it sounds unfair already, does it not? However, behind the scenes there are this thing we call diminishing returns. The diminishing returns for Parry, Dodge and Miss for Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights* are different to the diminishng returns of Druids. The reason for this is because by having diffrent diminishing returns Blizzard aims to make the tanks even.

Those are the basics as I understand them, I may be wrong in some detail, but I do not think it will make my suggested solution (see below) any less relevant!

*Death Knights might have diffrent diminishing returns compared to Paladins and Warriors due to their inability to Block, this I do not know. Althought it is not that relevant to the specific issue.

The idea:
So, what is my idea?

My idea is that they should change the game so that things work like this:

The diminishing returns should be the same for Parry, Dodge and Miss - for all tanks.

Today this is not the case, since Druids focus on Dodge alone it would be unfair with how the game works today. So, and this is the core of my idea, I suggest that Blizzard should make it so that whatever Dodge value a Druid has - it will be split ("behind the scenes") into 3 parts. Each part will have its own diminishing returns. So having only Dodge will for Druids work as having Parry, Dodge and Miss for a Warrior, Paladin or Death Knight.

It will look like this:

Warrior: Parry, Dodge, Miss.
Paladin: Parry, Dodge, Miss.
Death Knight: Parry, Dodge, Miss.
Druid: Dodge, Dodge, Dodge.

So a Druid with 60% Dodge, would have its Dodge split into 3 parts, each granting 20% avoidance and having its own diminishing returns, seperate from the other two.

This would make the avoidance that prevents all damage from the avoided blow equal for all tanks.

Now to deal with Block.

Block reduces the damage from a blow by a certain amount, it doesn't prevent all the damage from the blow to hit the tank. To compensate for not having Block, Death Knights and Druids should have the Armor Contribution from Frost Presence and Dire Bear Form tweaked in a way that grants them more armor than equally geared Warriors and Paladins. The amount of armor should be such that if you compare how much damage a Warrior and a Druid has taken on the same boss fight with the same level of gear will be the same. The difference will just be that the Warrior take the damage slighly more in "waves", whereas the Druid (with slighly more armor than the Warrior) takes the damage in a more "steady flow".

The health increasing values of Frost Presence and Dire Bear Form should be tweaked in such a way that Death Knights and Druids (druids who in the past has been known for their large HP pools) will not have more HP than a Warrior or Paladin with equal gear - because due to the above changes they will be equal and so should their HP be.

Result:
The itemization, gear focus, and "visible" game mechanics of all classes will stay the same but the insecurity to wether or not all tanks are equal or not will vanquish from the face of the Earth.

Disclaimer:
While Druids do not get any "decreased chance to be hit" from Defense, since we do not use Defense, we can still be missed depending on the hit chance of the mob. Unfair advantage?
Can possibly be resolved by making miss trigger the diminishing returns of one of the 3 partitions of Dodge? "Behind the scenes". So our avoidance will look like this: [Dodge] + [Dodge] + [Dodge+Miss].

End Note:
I hope that you enjoyed reading my suggestion. I hope it makes sense to you the way it seems to make sense to me. I hope that you will reply to my thread and comment on my idea. Constructive feedback is always welcomed. I hope I did not commit too many crimes towards the English language. English is not my mother tongue!

Lastly, I hope it was not written in such a way that it was too boring to read through it all! :P

Yours truly,
Zarchoof

[underdogba]

Let me attempt to summarize --

You're basically proposing that different tanking classes get different percentage benefits from avoidance stats.

That actually does make some sense. They already do things like that with the base stats.

One thing that might be worth keeping in mind though is that the diminishing marginal returns on avoidance don't solely have to do with differentiating the tank classes, it's also to avoid the kind of avoidance stacking we saw at the end of BC. If it weren't for the totally inelegant Sunwell Radiance debuff, boss encounters would have to be tuned to dodge-dodge-parry-miss-death in order for there to be a reasonable amount of boss dps.

[trangoul]

id give up parry on my pally in place of the armor cap. Im ~65 reduction atm from armor. a 75% reduction would actually not be a 10% mitigation increase, but almost a 33% increase in mitigation (35% damage taken vs 25% taken). Block makes up some of this but the pure armor difference is HUGE

[Zodak]

Hmm Dodge, Parry, Miss, and Block are not all equal. Parry has a negative effect of speeding up the attackers next attack. This results on increased damage spikes on certain bosses. This dodge being a complete complete avoidance of the incoming attack with out any negative effect is much preferred over parry.

Also Block for a Warrior and Paladin are also tied in part to the use of an ability (Shield Block, Divine Shield) so a druid having the same damage reduction from armor that is passively applied would not really be fair. A paladin/warrior has to use an ability to get full benefit of block. (Blizzard has already stated they do not want to give druids a form of block as the goal is not to make all tanks the same. The goal is to give them similar mitigation.

---------------------------------
It will look like this:

Warrior: Parry, Dodge, Miss.
Paladin: Parry, Dodge, Miss.
Death Knight: Parry, Dodge, Miss.
Druid: Dodge, Dodge, Dodge.
---------------------------------

As a player who enjoys playing a Warrior/Paladin/Druid tank I would much rather have Dodge, Dodge, Dodge for any one of them. (I have no tanking experience for a DK)

Also having a 60% dodge would have major effects on PVP. This would be much like rogues stacking 90% avoidance in BC and kicking ass in battle grounds. If anyone wants to see what it is like make a lv10 rogue and gear for dodge and go into a 10-19 BG. You can get 80-90% with out too much trouble at this level.

[CSJenova]

Your parries don't speed up the bosses swing timer. When the boss parries YOUR attack his speed timer is sped up. Parry is just as good as dodge in pure avoidance. They both completely eliminate an attack, and I believe characters get parry hasting as well, so your theory would actually be completely backwards. As a tank that can parry, I would much rather have a high parry than dodge as that means more white attacks, which also means more boss parries, but you get a bit more threat as well. Higher levels of expertise would only make you parrying better.

[Zarc]

Allright. Seems like there might be an issue or two I have looked past if I understand the constructive feedback correctly.

I don't understand where trangoul is going with his talk about armor cap though, as far as I know Druid and Warrior armor are not supposed to be that much diffrent in Wrath, for instance they are nerfing our armor in a soon-to-be patch by making so that bonus armor doesn't get multiplied by the Dire Bear Form multiplier.

Anyway, feel free to sum your comment up by ending your comment by either saying that you buy the idea, partially buy the idea or that you do not at all buy the idea. :P

//Zarc

[tolkienfanman]

defense doesn't increase the mobs chance to miss. It increases your chance to dodge, parry and block. The only thing that affects chance to miss is +hit. As long as the raid bosses don't start stacking hit we should be fine.

[Zarc]

defense doesn't increase the mobs chance to miss. It increases your chance to dodge, parry and block. The only thing that affects chance to miss is +hit. As long as the raid bosses don't start stacking hit we should be fine.

Defense decreases the chance you have to be hit by an attack aswell as your dodge, parry and block.

"Decreases your chance to be hit and critically hit by x.xx%"

[EbGbZ]

defense doesn't increase the mobs chance to miss. It increases your chance to dodge, parry and block. The only thing that affects chance to miss is +hit. As long as the raid bosses don't start stacking hit we should be fine.

NOOBS OUT... lol if you do not know hat you are talking about you should not be in a forum about said subject.

And droods have close to 40% dodge already with all the agi stacking right... and armor capped and the "nerf" to your armor is rings/trinkets/necks to prevent you from taking items armor just for the armor multiplier and give you the ability to grab oterh items with more dodge as i understand it... though we cannot speculate on how much it will change droods till we see it in action.

[Swiftly]

why do you want to convert druids into some other class?

as of right now! druids have the over all reduce of damage then any class, we also have more HP then any other class. our avoidance (dodge, miss) may not be the best but we still have a better time to live (TTL). so you want to increase the avoidance to make us better in what?

[Indris]

Why exactly do you want all classes to be equal and similiar in every single way? What's the point of having different classes if they're all going to be the same, and have the same playstyle?

[Zarc]

I personally do not want all classes do be equal. I personally do not have a problem, because I currently run Heroics with my friends as an DPS and off-tank. I have just been reading posts of other Druids on the wow-europe boards and they have been whining about us not having good enough avoidance, and even blue posts posted on mmo-champion have replied to these stating that while they have no plan to implement parry for druids right now nothing is ever set in stone etc. etc. This was just me taking part in this discussion with an idea of how to resolve the problem which people gave me the impression of existed. :P Nothing else.

[Captain Midnight]

Just give me 500,000 health in bear form.

MANA SPONGE HOOOOO!

[Zarc]

I think we can conclude that the idea sucked! The end :P

[Mistrblnk]

id give up parry on my pally in place of the armor cap. Im ~65 reduction atm from armor. a 75% reduction would actually not be a 10% mitigation increase, but almost a 33% increase in mitigation (35% damage taken vs 25% taken). Block makes up some of this but the pure armor difference is HUGE

1) Druids aren't armor capped anymore, at least not easily in T7, and patch after patch is making sure that pretty soon druids will have less armor than any other tank, even DKs.

2) Run the math, you won't be getting that huge a bump from losing 20% parry. Infact, at higher gear levels, just losing alll your parry to get to the armor caps results in taking more damage. But that's besides the point. Look at the iLvL and points required to get these tradeoffs in terms of how hard it is to get armor versus how much parry stuff has.

[Beasty]

1) Druids aren't armor capped anymore, at least not easily in T7, and patch after patch is making sure that pretty soon druids will have less armor than any other tank, even DKs.

No

[Mistrblnk]

No

Proof otherwise? Because I bet you can't find me an armor capped druid right now, and you'll be even less likely to find one the next time a patch rolls around.

[Dooudad]

how about isntead of makeing it redo compleatly how we gain dodge, give db form a bonus of increseing your miss chace on incomeing physical attacks based on agi as well.

They could set the ammount of agi per % as they like, it would keep us from "hogging" the "tanking" accesseries. I mean even 1% miss rate per 200 agi is going to be 4-5% less physical dammage for most druids in naxx.

but as far as your idea of lowering our hp to make them want to give us more avoidance, HECK NO!!!! theres plenty of caster mobs out there who i love haveing my hp pool on that i CANT DODGE their main dammageing attacks. Where as other tanks have slightly better medigation over all on those casters we still need a big hp pool to compeat on them.

PS: i still miss the 200 str i lost from 70-80!

[estrild]

If you only want to stack armor, rings, necks, cloaks, trinkets, weapon, u MIGHT be near armor cap, but if u do that u will lose tons of other stats.

Next patch we will lose tons of armor because of the change to armor multiplier. IF they change and fix our armor SHOULD be at least as the warriors right now, but if not we will have less armor.

Our class is not an avoidance tank, but a mitigation tank, we are losing our armor (TONS). We might end with the same amount or less armor of some tanks. The other tanks are avoidance tanks, this will put us in a situation in which tank druids will be dead.

Yes many people are QQ about our dodge, and it is true, in TBC i had 55% dodge raid buffed, and almost armor cap. (I wasn't in sunwell gear)

Right now my dodge is at 43% raid buffed and waaay below the armor cap. So if they want to change our armor multiplier, we are still having our 43% dodge buff and even less armor. Yes we are the tank class with more HP, but still our HP is not 100k. The bosses in raids right now hit HARD, i mean even if our class has 4k more than any tank, thats not even 1 full swing, and most of the mobs in raids have a faster swing than they used to, and with our dodge so low we are going to be dead or our healers go oom and then die.

Yes I am being pesimist about our healers and stuff, but we are going to be the worst tank to heal, we are known to be mana sponge, but with the new patch what are we going to be!

The suggestion that stats scale different among classes makes a great idea, the diminishing returns in dodge is our main problem, because all the other tanks needs many stats for the avoidance, we only need 1, maybe 2 with dodge rating but its the same thing.

If thet change the diminishing return mechanics only in bears, I am ok with the concept but we should have more benefit from it than the other tanks.

I am afraid of bear druids, right now we are not bad, but in the future...... i dont know.

[Dooudad]

If you only want to stack armor, rings, necks, cloaks, trinkets, weapon, u MIGHT be near armor cap, but if u do that u will lose tons of other stats.

Next patch we will lose tons of armor because of the change to armor multiplier. IF they change and fix our armor SHOULD be at least as the warriors right now, but if not we will have less armor.

Our class is not an avoidance tank, but a mitigation tank, we are losing our armor (TONS). We might end with the same amount or less armor of some tanks. The other tanks are avoidance tanks, this will put us in a situation in which tank druids will be dead.

Yes many people are QQ about our dodge, and it is true, in TBC i had 55% dodge raid buffed, and almost armor cap. (I wasn't in sunwell gear)

Right now my dodge is at 43% raid buffed and waaay below the armor cap. So if they want to change our armor multiplier, we are still having our 43% dodge buff and even less armor. Yes we are the tank class with more HP, but still our HP is not 100k. The bosses in raids right now hit HARD, i mean even if our class has 4k more than any tank, thats not even 1 full swing, and most of the mobs in raids have a faster swing than they used to, and with our dodge so low we are going to be dead or our healers go oom and then die.

Yes I am being pesimist about our healers and stuff, but we are going to be the worst tank to heal, we are known to be mana sponge, but with the new patch what are we going to be!

The suggestion that stats scale different among classes makes a great idea, the diminishing returns in dodge is our main problem, because all the other tanks needs many stats for the avoidance, we only need 1, maybe 2 with dodge rating but its the same thing.

If thet change the diminishing return mechanics only in bears, I am ok with the concept but we should have more benefit from it than the other tanks.

I am afraid of bear druids, right now we are not bad, but in the future...... i dont know.

you are correct, i mean even with survival of the fittest tonight patch work hit me for 53k when we got him below 5% our hp is high but not that high compared to the incoming dammage per second we have in LK.

if they drop us to 60% ish redux from armor, we have still 12% extra from PotP. Question is though is that 12% in with the armor's redux or after. example

10k hit on 60% + 12% = you taking 2800 dammage.
10k hit the other way its 10k -60% = 4k -12% = 3520 dammage.

the idea behind it was giveing us more medigation but compared to haveing 72% armor redux if it happens after the fact its not enough (though it working on casting is great)