Glyph of Blocking - Revisited

[cfruendt]

I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing, as this seems to be unanimously the "best" prot warrior glyph, and I've been using it since it came out, but I found myself wondering the other day why that would be in the case of raid boss fights, and I've not seen anyone explain why it's so hot here, or on MMO, or on wowhead...

Thoughts -

as to why it's not so hot on harder hitting boss fights...(thinking Marrowgar, certain parts of fester)...you're looking at hits of 8-17k. For such fights, I'm not wearing gear oriented towards block, and have about 1600 BV. +10% of that is 160 block value as extra mitigation...that won't save me on a boss fight big hit, and it's basically too small for a healer to notice and save their mana. Nor does it generate that much extra threat via damage done with Damage Shield (20% of your block value for me is 320 dmg...32 more not going to make much difference). 10% extra dmg on the Shield slam is nice, true...but...

if you want more threat, Glyph of Vigilance seems a better way to go, perhaps even Glyph of Devastate for initial threat

if you want more mitigation, Glyph of Last Stand/Glyph of Shield Wall seem better. Allows you to use them more proactively, not just in an "oh crap" situation, and ease it for your healers.

Thoughts? Feel like I must be missing something as this seems to be against the common wisdom, and wow popular shows Glyph of Blocking as by far the most popular prot war glyph. FYI, I'm generally someone who switches glyphs for different situations (e.g, adding Glyph of Cleaving for 5 mans / trash & Blocking makes sense in that situation, but swapping from Cleave to Last Stand or Shield Wall for bosses).

Reason am asking this, is I'm considering for boss fights going from current Blocking/Vigilance/Last Stand to Vigilance/Last Stand/Shield Wall.

[Craigadiddle]

It's more threat and more survivability.

you dont stack BV, but as your gear level increases u get more STR which is block.

With shield block up, and with my block doing double, i'm blocking up to 10K (well i saw 9.9k on festergut 10 today) , so i'm sure this is better than nothing at all.
the glyph is a small help towards this actually.

[Tomatenapfel]

I have been thinking the same thing and switched that glyph out back when I started raiding ulduar 25. my prot warrior never made it into toc though, I swichted on to my healer as my main So i don't really know about toc and icc, but to me it seems like that glyph is not that great.

[Shelly]

1600 BV.

Shield block every 40s, so 3200 BV for 10s.

Critical block for 6400 BV.

640 more BV there. Yeah, that's a pretty good number & chances are your BV in raid will be even higher with things like kings.

It also allows for those nice max damage shield slams.

[zeo]

Thoughts? Feel like I must be missing something as this seems to be against the common wisdom, and wow popular shows Glyph of Blocking as by far the most popular prot war glyph.

You're not against any wisdom, since Glyph of Blocking has dropped from the ladder with the SBV change, it went from a must-have to a nice optional one.

[cfruendt]

I am missing the double block value spoken of above..."Use: Increases your block value by 10% for 10 sec after using your Shield Slam ability." how does 1600 become 3200?

[Sarcasm]

Critical Block talent.

[bw13187]

He is factoring in Shield Block, which doubles your block value.

I stopped using this glyph. Taunt, Devastate, Vigilance for me. The glyph was nice because it was one of our only glyphs that actually added to our survivability, but...

Taunt: seen too many wipes happen due to missed taunts. Every time it happens I just say, "they have a glyph for that."

Dev. and Vig. are just the best threat glyphs, and the SW glyph nerfs it too hard and the Last Stand glyph is kind of meh.

[herpecin]

1600 + 10% = 1760 (base amount used in this threat + glyph)

1760 x2 = 3520 (previous number with use of Shield Block)

3520 x2 = 7040 (previous number with Critical Block)

1600 x2 = 3200 (base amount with use Shield Block)

3200 x2 = 6400 (previous answer with Critical Block)

7040 - 6400 = 640 (amount the glyph can gain you with maximum use)


knocking 640 damage off an attack might not seem like much, but when up against fester who swings at around .9 seconds with TC up, it adds up quickly.

[Nithara]

It's worth noting that extra block value up to the cap boost your tps by a quite big amount.

Last patch they nerfed shieldlsam's scaling by capping it at ~2k block value, don't remember the exact figure. However they did increase the threat done by shieldslam by 30%. That is, as far as I know, an added 30% on all damage. Add that with the 20% increased damage from 2t10 set bonus, and it's a fairly significant threat boost.

1 block value + 30% increased block value from talents + 20% more damage on shieldslam + 30% increased threat = 2.028 threat before def stance multiplier.
From what I know the def stance multiplier is 2.0735 (quick goggle search told me that at least!) so in the end it would turn out as 2.028*2.0735 = about 4.2 threat. -From what I can tell all of these multipliers affect different areas, so they should stack.

If we then take the up time of shield block into account as well as damage shield, we'll get some bigger numbers.

At 1600 block value you would get out about 672 more threat from shield slam when using glyph of block, not factoring in damage shield or critical block.

[JustintimeSS]

I just feel glyph of Blocking far outweighs most of our other choices and I have zero pieces have SBV on them. I roll with Shieldwall, Devastate and Blocking and I have yet to find a better combination for me. I like the 2 min CD on SW, I love the fast build up of sunders with devastate and blocking is a double-edged powerhouse.

[cfruendt]

Anecdotal, yes, but ran ICC10 & 25 with my normal groups this week, dropped glyph of blocking to add in last stand. (other 2 were Vig / Shield Wall, fyi). Mostly noticed a threat drop vs. my pally tank partner...usually I can outthreat him, but had trouble this week, and all gear was same...so seems it's the glyph (or he had more coffee than usual)...that extra bit on shield slam is bigger than I expected, and the little bit spread around on trash is nice as well. Going back to Glyph of Blocking. Ymmv.

[kassy]

I've always used it, from day1 of wotlk till now in icc10. I don't tank 25s anymore tho, due to going arms main spec, and I spose it could be fight dependant nowadays, but I'd still use it for 25s just cus it's an awesome boost to both tps and EH.