Prot Tanking and the Avoidance Fix

[Kanadei]

Hey guys,

Fairly new Tankadin here but I've been playing game since release. I've spent the last couple weeks wrapping my head around the recent tank changes (avoidance is bad now? since when do tanks need haste?) and reconfiguring my gear from dodge/parry to hit/expertise/haste in order for smoother holy power generation and less spiky tanking etc.

Then I log in and see the new avoidance change to vengeance, which effectively makes avoidance stats contribute 100% of the mitigated damage (well it says average attack but that should be fairly close) to vengeance stack which means a lot more vengeance (and people were complaining about tank dps already).

My main question is, exactly how serious is this change? Is it large enough to affect our stat priorities? Or is it just fixing parry and dodge from being practically useless and turning them into an easy way to generate vengeance?

Off the top of my head I would assume its the latter, as vengeance has virtually nothing to do with survivability mechanisms like holy power generation and instead is about keeping threat but I wanted to generate a discussion so that more knowledgeable players can share their thoughts.

And if any of the above is incorrect I apologise, once again I'm new here.

[Deleted]

Avoidance is still the worst tanking stat for survivability. All this do is give you more damage and threat.

It feels like the point with this is to make paladins stacking dodge/parry, especially in later tiers wont be completely gimped in threat.

In a tier or 2, dps would only increase their damage while tanks would decrease due to vengeance going down due to higher avoidance.

This just makes avoidance slightly less useless.

[Kanadei]

Avoidance is still the worst tanking stat for survivability. All this do is give you more damage and threat.

It feels like the point with this is to make paladins stacking dodge/parry, especially in later tiers wont be completely gimped in threat.

In a tier or 2, dps would only increase their damage while tanks would decrease due to vengeance going down due to higher avoidance.

This just makes avoidance slightly less useless.

Yeah this is more or less what I figured, although I was just reading comments in the News section and saw some people saying that this could actually be a nerf to vengeance, can anyone confirm/deny this?

The idea is that without avoidance to refresh the stack of Vengeance (instead counting as a new hit instead of extending your previous hit by refreshing it) you wont be able to stack vengeance as high and it will inevitably "cap" at some point depending on your incoming damage - is there any weight to this argument?

Personally I'm hoping this is just an avoidance buff, but if that was the case it would suck pretty hard.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

It changes nothing with regards to stat priorities. Parry and Dodge remain below Mastery and Haste. it just makes an (un)lucky avoidance streak at the beginning of a fight segment less devastating.

[Rivin]

Yeah this is more or less what I figured, although I was just reading comments in the News section and saw some people saying that this could actually be a nerf to vengeance, can anyone confirm/deny this?

The idea is that without avoidance to refresh the stack of Vengeance (instead counting as a new hit instead of extending your previous hit by refreshing it) you wont be able to stack vengeance as high and it will inevitably "cap" at some point depending on your incoming damage - is there any weight to this argument?

Personally I'm hoping this is just an avoidance buff, but if that was the case it would suck pretty hard.

Well, if you're trying to maintain a large stack by avoiding attacks, then it's a nerf to that (assuming that the avoided attacks will actually lower the stack), but that's so unpredictable that I don't really see how it's going to even be noticeable (except for maybe Guardians with Savage Defense up).

[Kanadei]

Well, if you're trying to maintain a large stack by avoiding attacks, then it's a nerf to that (assuming that the avoided attacks will actually lower the stack), but that's so unpredictable that I don't really see how it's going to even be noticeable (except for maybe Guardians with Savage Defense up).

Nah I just meant will this change keep our Vengeance from "refreshing" with an avoided hit and in doing so stop it from rolling together as high because the previous hit drops off from the damage.

But the more I think about it the less I think the wording of the hot fix suggests this, and the less I think that Blizzard would nerf vengeance to that capacity.

In any case it's good to know dodge and parry arent completely wasted, even if all they do is grant a little extra vengeance and threat (as well as avoidance obv).