Savage Defense and Avoidance

[Terrab]

How does savage defense play into avoidance?

I know a warriors/paladins with 15% dodge, 20% parry, and 20% (just random numbers) block often say they have 55% avoidance? (Is there an internal cooldown on blocks?)

So if I as a bear tank have 35% dodge and 35% crit can I say I have 70% avoidance or since savage defense isn't a passive bonus like block do I actually have less?

I've been asked a couple times now what my total avoidance is and the only concrete answer I feel I can give is my dodge but obviously savage defense plays some role in avoidance the question is how much?

[osutimmers]

savage defense is mitigation, not avoidance.

Its basically effective health, its almost almost constantly, for me at least, and blocks about 1900, so its about 1900 effective health

[Xthform]

I just made my first tanking toon after 3 years of dps and from what I've learned so far what warriors and paladins are refering to in terms of avoidance means there over all avoidance and trying to reach unhittable which is a combination of block dodge parry to equal 102% or greater meaning all incoming white damage is either dodged blocked parried or is a miss. There is no internal CD on block since block doesn't negate an attack unless you block the total amount of the attack which doesn't happen much in raids.

I don't know how bears calculate your over all avoidance but I know it's way lower then warriors and pallies due to not having block. You do however getting fewer DR on your dodge since its really all you have in means of avoidance. Thats about all I can throw at ya I'm still learning the whole tank thing I'm at 64% over all avoidance and 25k health unbuffed on my pally he's been 80 for 3 days so far.

[Separate]

Your basically a meat tank, you stick your big head out there and get stepped on. BUT I believe dodge is your only avoidance so if you have 35% dodge u have 35% avoidance. I dont believe your crit falls into play with any type of avoidance. You cant parry or block so your stuck with stacking agi-stam.

[Alski]

Avoidance
- Parry
- Dodge
- Miss

Mitigation
- Armor
- Block
- Savage deference

Dont confuse the 2. Avoidance is just that, you totally avoided damage from the attack. A pally with 55% avoidance will probably be 20% dodge, 25% parry and 10% miss

Xthform. the 102.4% value was the old uncrushable value for warriors and paladins, block does not stop you getting hit it mearly absorbs some of that attack, if someone wants to be unhitable then its just their parry,dodge and miss thats taken into the calculation

a bears avoidance is Dodge + Miss. a druid will most likely have ~15-20 defense from tanking jewlery but thats pretty much negated by the boss being 3 levels higher so its effectly Dodge + 5%

[arees]

if you have 35% dodge you will have 40% avoidance assuming you have no defense. You have an innate 5% to be missed. Also, OP didn't take miss into account. On my pally I am about 26% dodge, 20% parry, and about 10% miss. That means I have about 56% avoidance. I have about 13% block plus 30% block from holy shield. Therefor I have 100% "hit avoidance" and with raid buffs that goes over the 102.4% needed to block every hit. When I say "hit avoidance" I mean normal hits... aka that every hit is blocked.

[Terrab]

Basically it sounds like if a warrior or paladin is including block as avoidance they're doing it wrong. Good to know.

So if a shield wearer says they have 25% block and they block 1500 damage each time and I have a 25% crit chance which absorbs 1500 damage on a boss fight would his block and my savage defense be considered equal?

[arees]

Basically it sounds like if a warrior or paladin is including block as avoidance they're doing it wrong. Good to know.

So if a shield wearer says they have 25% block and they block 1500 damage each time and I have a 25% crit chance which absorbs 1500 damage on a boss fight would his block and my savage defense be considered equal?

It depends on when it applies. Block for instance applies after armor. I don't know about the mechanics of shields. For example, lets assume 60% mitigation from armor and 1000 block value. The boss hits for 100,000. Armor reduces it to 40,000 and block takes off 1000. Damage done, 39,000.

Now assume that block was first. 100,000 becomes 99,000. Armor reduces it to 40,600.

Block mitigation being after armor mitigation is clearly better. But as I said, I don't know shield mechanics.

[Captain Midnight]

Avoidance is the measure of how often you completely avoid any damage, and it's only Dodge, Parry, and Miss. Block is a form of mitigation, and can really only be considered avoidance when your block value is greater than the damage of the incoming attack.

The 102% gag was back in BC and it was to avoid crushing blows - with the removal of crushing blows on boss mobs, the 102% means nothing now.

So, taking the numbers provided by the OP, a Warrior with 15% dodge and 20% parry who is at 540 defense will have a total avoidance of ~46%, meaning that there's a 46% chance on each attack for them to take no damage. All bosses have a 5% chance to miss, and at 540 defense, you get an extra 5.6% chance to be missed by attacks, so together that's ~11% miss.

Block and Savage Defense are mitigation, and if a warrior has 20% chance to block, that means that there's a 20% chance when he's hit to reduce the damage by, say, 2000. You're still taking damage, but not as much as an attack that you don't block. Blocked attacks can still kill you.

As a Druid, our avoidance is significantly lower than the other tanks. We can get to about 50% dodge if we socket and enchant for agility, but at that level Death Knights, Warriors, and Paladins would still be a good 10% ahead of us in terms of avoidance, and gemming like that would probably put us at the same or lower health than those tanks. So essentially, we can either have less avoidance than the other tanks and have a bigger health pool than them. or we can have less avoidance than other tanks and have a smaller health pool than them.

[Alski]

It depends on when it applies. Block for instance applies after armor. I don't know about the mechanics of shields. For example, lets assume 60% mitigation from armor and 1000 block value. The boss hits for 100,000. Armor reduces it to 40,000 and block takes off 1000. Damage done, 39,000.

Now assume that block was first. 100,000 becomes 99,000. Armor reduces it to 40,600.

Block mitigation being after armor mitigation is clearly better. But as I said, I don't know shield mechanics.

pssst your second calculation is wrong. it would be 39,600.

but anyway block/absorb mechanics(PW:S, SD ect) are applied to the damage after armor mitigation just like always so you get the full use from them

[Terrab]

It depends on when it applies. Block for instance applies after armor. I don't know about the mechanics of shields. For example, lets assume 60% mitigation from armor and 1000 block value. The boss hits for 100,000. Armor reduces it to 40,000 and block takes off 1000. Damage done, 39,000.

Now assume that block was first. 100,000 becomes 99,000. Armor reduces it to 40,600.

Block mitigation being after armor mitigation is clearly better. But as I said, I don't know shield mechanics.

Everything I've read points to shield mitigation being done after armor. Basically I'm just looking for some way to compare myself to other tanks. Armor, dodge, parry, health, and miss are easy to compare but I wasn't sure how to compare savage defense to blocks.

It sounds reasonable that if savage defense absorbs as much as a block and my crit chance is the same as a block chance that they'd be roughly equal, at least for most boss fights.

[Melonberry]

It does not exactly equal block. The 25% block on a warrior would be on an incoming hit. 25% crit goes off your attacks, the more you make...the more shields you get. It may or may not be up for 25% of the attacks.

[Neba]

It's pretty hard to compare Savage Defense to blocking because SD depends on at least these factors: your attack speed, chance to crit (mob debuffed?), attack power, your avoidance, mob's attack speed + other melee strikes it can do on you, number of mobs. Add in the fact that SD can also proc off your special attacks and Lacerate bleed tick crits and you can see why it is hard to determine how useful SD is. :-\

[Alski]

Everything I've read points to shield mitigation being done after armor. Basically I'm just looking for some way to compare myself to other tanks. Armor, dodge, parry, health, and miss are easy to compare but I wasn't sure how to compare savage defense to blocks.

It sounds reasonable that if savage defense absorbs as much as a block and my crit chance is the same as a block chance that they'd be roughly equal, at least for most boss fights.

Our crit chance >>> block chance of warriors and paladins, but it ismore random. With a warrior or paladin you can work out exactly how many unmitigated hits will land but with a druid you could go thru a string of no crits and no dodges or vice versa

here goes a little example with arbitrary numbers using the hit table.

Warrior/paladin
20% dodge 20% parry 10% miss 20% block with 1500 block value

Druid
45% dodge 0% parry 5% miss 40% crit with 6000AP (1500 shield value)

Dice roll of 1-100 to determine what happened to the hit

Warrior/paladin
Dodge, 1-20
Parry, 21-40
Miss, 41-50
Block, 51-70 <-- here a paladin will have +30% from his holy shield (making it so they take no normal hits) which will be active pretty much 100% of the time on everything except aoe trash .
Normal hit , 71-100


Druid
Dodge, 1-45
Miss, 46-50
SD, 51-??
now heres the problem if your lucky savage defense will be active for all remaining hits baking it far better than block but at the same time you could also be unlucky.
Normal hit, luck based

[Sunshine]

Savage defense / crit chance has an interesting relation to block chance...

Basic intuition towards math:

Assume you're getting hit (excluding dodges -- i'm talking about when you actually get hit, and physical damage only) at exactly the same rate you're hitting the mob (specials + white hits). In this case, crit chance can be compared directly to block chance.

If you're getting hit more slowly (either because it's a slower swinging boss or because you're dodging more), your "block chance" is higher than your crit chance (more chance for a crit per incoming hit).

If you're getting hit more quickly (less avoidance or faster swinging boss), your "block chance" is lower than your crit chance (less chance for a crit per incoming hit).


It seems to scale the opposite way that differently than block does -- small, fast hits are where block shines, because chance to block is equal for each of those hits, which leads to a higher proportion of damage absorbed overall than for large, slow hits. We have a higher chance to "block" the slower the hit happens (up to some threshold where we're near-guaranteed to "block").

Edit: "opposite" isn't quite right here -- did some more napkin math. If your crit chance / the attack speed difference is such that you're near-guaranteed to have a SD proc, you're actually taking *more* damage than you would at faster boss attack speeds because you're "wasting" potential SD procs while it's already up and you're waiting for a hit. If you never get to a "near-guaranteed" point, you'll take *slightly* less damage from equal-speed bosses than slower-speed bosses, but the difference is remarkably small.

[Fojos]

Our crit chance >>> block chance of warriors and paladins,

Agree about warriors, but you even proved yourself that paladins have more block than we have crit, since holy shield is always up. This means many paladins remove white hits from the table completely.

[Alski]

Agree about warriors, but you even proved yourself that paladins have more block than we have crit, since holy shield is always up. This means many paladins remove white hits from the table completely.

i was meaning base obviously.

[arel00]

Allow me to clarify a couple points in short:

First, that 102.4% number refers to the point when you push direct hits out of the combat table. At that point you can only be missed, parry, dodge or block any upcoming attack. Back in TBC that was called "uncrushable" status, since it effectively pushed crushing blows out of the ocmbat table, and it was the only way to do that. After 3.0, crushing blows were basically "removed" from raids due to pushing them from being allowed to mobs 3 levels higher (raid bosses) to 4 levels higher.
Second, that cap it is often now called "unhittable" status. It doesn't mean you won't get any damage, but it does state that on the combat table you cannot get any "hit" result from the boss. Worst case (for you) is "block".

To that purpose, Block adds directly to Miss, Parry and Dodge. That is often the source of confusion about what is considered Avoidance. Avoidance is Miss, Parry and Dodge, for all classes. Block is a form of mitigation, so is SD.

When asked about avoidance, paladins usually take it as a question about unhittable status, so beware to specify you want to know about "pure" avoidance. It's just a habit

To the combat table, SD does NOT add up directly to your avoidance. It works, of course, only upon non-avoided attacks, but the effective "block" chance of SD depends on your avoidance, your crit chance, and the boss attack speed. On this regard, I second Sunshine, who explained it quite well.