Have I missed something about Shield Block?

[Zhyq]

Its been proven that avoidance is the best for farming bosses, if you know what ot expect for a boss, and have the gear to do it, you dont need a huge health pool.

I'm a prot warrior, and I am the MT for my guild.

Guess what? I'm not waiting for some big announcement on some random forums that tells me how to gear my character. Do you know why? Because that sounds too fucking stupid. Learn to play the game. I mean seriously... learn the mechanics, learn the bosses, learn your character... don't just google "best tank spec and gear" and think you're done. If you do that, then you suck ass.

Amen.

[elidion]

As having to much avoidance can make incoming damage to spikey. which is bad for your healers.

God I hate this line of thinking, so getting hit 5 out of 10 times instead of 4 out of 10 is better because it appears to be less spikey. You can heal the same exact way for a tank with 10% more avoidance than the other tank and nothing has changed other than you will see 10% more overheal. Usually avoidance has nothing to do with mitigation, it's never a choice between +dodge and +armor with the exception of a few trinkets. With a warrior or pally block value can help cut down incoming damage as well but when hodir is hitting for 30k, having a dodge is better than a block any day. I have a warrior and DK tank and back in 3.0 I had 73% avoidance on my DK, and was the favorite of all my healers, I could reach unhittable with lichborne and Unbreakable armor (103% avoidance) which was nice for fenzy bosses. My DK was prefered over any other (which was in part why DK tanking was nerfed) but now I am still around 63% avoidance and I am still told I am the easiest to heal. You see, our warriors and pallys have about a combined 70% with miss+dodge+parry+block, so their non block hit still hits them 30% of the time (well technically the pally is always 100%) where me as a DK will get hit 37% of the time...so 7% of the landed hits are 1300 or so more than the warriors, but my actual avoidance is 18% higher than the warrior or pally so I always take less damage over the course of a boss fight.

Spikey is 1x 40k hit vs 2x 20k twice as fast hits...
Spikey is not 4x 30k hits vs 5x 30k same pace hits... or even 5x 28k same pace hits

[heerobya]

Block rating and value shouldn't be avoided, as in if the gear has really good stats and blk/bv don't avoid it just because it has blk/bv...

but unless you are tanking trash or heroics or fasting hitting adds like on XT then don't choose block over dodge, defense, parry (in that order)

I'll try and make this easier to understand...

if the item with Block rating and block value has a lot more armor, stamina, strength, and defense then what you are wearing, but lacks the dodge/parry it's probably stil better to use the blk/bv piece. Like an iLvl 226 item from Ulduar w/ Blk/BV versus an iLvl 200 or even 213 item with dodge/parry...

choose the 226 blk/bv piece unless it breaks tier set bonuses.

The increased armor/stamina/defense is better then like less then 1% more avoidance.

If same iLvl or similar, dodge>defense>parry>block value>block rating.

All of this, of course IMO

[Blafasel]

Shield Block is not very good for Prot Warriors
1. you have 100% Block-Chance 1/4 of the time (at least i'm using Shield Block on CD, also for extra aggro thru Shield Slam), so Block-Chance is completely uselesss 1/4 of the time.
2. The Bosses in Ulduar hit for about 15k+, who cares about 2000 blocked damage if you compare it to the extra dodge/parry you could gain (if these values are high enough, you will amost never have two fullhits in a row, and even if you do have you can just launch one of the many CDs you have - or blame the healers ;D )

The only thing it would be useful for is Trash (more Damage shields for more AoE Aggro) but AoE Trash is tanked by DKs and Prot Paladins much more effectively anyways, so who cares.


Even Blizzard stated a while ago in a Blue Post that they will think about redesigning Shield Blocks completely because it seems pretty much useless for at least Warriors (for Prot Paladins it's at least good for aggro as far as i know).

[lurked]

I'm a prot warrior, and I am the MT for my guild.

Guess what? I'm not waiting for some big announcement on some random forums that tells me how to gear my character. Do you know why? Because that sounds too fucking stupid. Learn to play the game. I mean seriously... learn the mechanics, learn the bosses, learn your character... don't just google "best tank spec and gear" and think you're done. If you do that, then you suck ass.

I'm a prot warrior, and I am the MT for my guild. <= See what I did here?

You totally miss the point, i'm not asking for an announcement saying what's the best stat or how to gear my character, I'm asking if I missed an announcement saying the block value changed in any way to make it better... Do you know why? Because the game CHANGES.

I'm gearing it the way I think its the best, but I'm trying to check if 'what I think' is the real thing, since a lot of people already made some references to HELP YOU TO CHOOSE, not to f.ing tell you how to gear.

I'm googling 'best tank spec and gear'? That made me laugh... We all know that tank gear is too situationnal, and there is almost never an item that'll be BIS for every situation(or rarely...... I'm looking at you, ranged weapon slot....)

Anyway, learning by yourself is good, but it's also a good thing to make sure you're right once in a while

[Cyribres]

^^^ What he said.

I've found that dodge/parry is much much better than SB. Thats through trial and error and testing.

But when you see many skilled warriors itemizing differently, you can't help but sit there and question whether or not your doing something wrong. Something you possibly over looked?

So saying "announcement" is taken out of context.

[wyrdone]

Prot pally here. Block rating is good, but you really don't need much to be effective. Most pallies are gearing avoidance/stam over block for progression as well.

And yeah, block value and block rating are better for us statwise than they are for warriors. Due to 100% uptime of HS and threat on block (though don't you all get rage from blocked attacks as well?).

[highwind01]

For Progression: Stack Stamina
For Farming: Stack Dodge

:



Stacking dodge is probably the most useless thing u can do

A 16 dodge rating gem gives 0,4% dodge at level 80 and, as dodge is probably your highest avoidance stat, is highly susceptible to diminishing returns.

A 16 defense rating gem gives 0,39% combined avoidance (-hit, parry, dodge), beeing much less susceptible to drs (because it is spread over the 3 stats), aswell as 0,13% block chance which is > 0,01% dodge on its own if u want to ignore the dr fact.

[Iq13]

I just hit 25% dodge, 20% parry, 30% block, 1300 bv @32k 160hit/32exp just with itemizing and using highest IL(213-226). Never really asked myself if its good or not. I just see what i have and how to use this gear best.

There is no better/worse.
If you need, farm yourself an avoid/stamina/block-set and use it when you think its good.

I remember my 13d/15p/53br set build out of ZA items. Was perfect in heroic instances, cuz of some rage probs there in T6 gear.

There is no "I have 35% dodge, im BestULDUARTANK".
So just improve step by step with the progress items you get.
To stack stamina mostly is preferred, but without avoid, hit and exp(teH real spikeKiller) it also makes no sense, like you all know...

-> you all talk about 2000 block? There were times i read nearly 7k (crit)blocks; it scales with Strength/AP, doesnt it ...

[Fleshpeeler]

The reason for stacking block is just for more damage mitigation and most the gear that has that stat also comes with block value which increases the damage of your shield slam and grants you an additional threat boost.

Blizzard is still currently working with the block mechanic because in their words "its currently a bit underwhelming"

However in the ulduar encounters I believe that avoidance is a much better way to go than mitigation, and the gear in the raid lends itself to this idea. Some of the damage these bosses are dealing just cannot be muscled through and you would be better off to try to avoid it completely. This also makes healing the tanks in this raid much easier for the healers.

[Sausagefan]

The reason for stacking block is just for more damage mitigation and most the gear that has that stat also comes with block value which increases the damage of your shield slam and grants you an additional threat boost.

Blizzard is still currently working with the block mechanic because in their words "its currently a bit underwhelming"

However in the ulduar encounters I believe that avoidance is a much better way to go than mitigation, and the gear in the raid lends itself to this idea. Some of the damage these bosses are dealing just cannot be muscled through and you would be better off to try to avoid it completely. This also makes healing the tanks in this raid much easier for the healers.

No, it doesn't. Beyond the usually pointless arguments of LOLITMAKESDAMAGESPIKEY and us speculating on how hard we are to heal (really, how would we actually know unless we healed ourselves?), you're taking a lot of undodgeable magic damage while main tanking. If stamina is best for progression (which it is), how is dodge better for farm?

Stacking avoidance gets destroyed by DR and was only viable in Sunwell anyways. Gogo stamina.

[Trusted]

No, it doesn't. Beyond the usually pointless arguments of LOLITMAKESDAMAGESPIKEY and us speculating on how hard we are to heal (really, how would we actually know unless we healed ourselves?), you're taking a lot of undodgeable magic damage while main tanking. If stamina is best for progression (which it is), how is dodge better for farm?

Stacking avoidance gets destroyed by DR and was only viable in Sunwell anyways. Gogo stamina.

I must agree that at this point in time stacking stamina seems like it will reign supreme even past progression because of the diminishing returns. With that out of the way and back on the main topic, Shield block is not a 'terrible' stat but you should not be stacking it at all. While shield block is still better then block value the bosses hit far too hard for the 2k shield block to matter in comparison to the dodge/parry or Stamina you would game. For instance General Vez hits for 35k ish. I would much rather have 50% avoidance 22-24% block and 43k hp then less hp by a couple thousand and a reduced raw avoidance by percentages.