I like to pride myself on my stupid luck sometimes, and last night was another sterling example of lady lucky shining her gilded, drooling countenance upon me. We were on Chimaeron and had a bit of a rough start. At least five people dead going in phase 2, terrible timing putting a massacre right near the start of phase 2, and down a healer for most of the fight to boot. I was pretty confident we were going to wipe but we continued on nonetheless. Phase 2 begins and I immediately tell the other tank, Ronada, I’m bubbling and high-tail my cowardly behind out of there.

Positioned on the other side of the room, Chimmy soon makes quick work out of poor Ronada and heads right for me. My first instinct is to start popping cooldowns like it’s going out of style. The next minute turns into something of a blur as I somehow continued to live. After nearly a minute I finally keel over, Chimaeron at somewhere around 5% health. We finish him off as people are questioning how the hell I just did what I did.

Honestly, I had no clue outside of suspecting a healthy dose of fortune. Hitting up the logs this morning I checked out the 51 seconds I spent tanking Chimaeron in phase 2 and saw the following:

So basically, I parried an attack. Ate the second, dropping me down to 1 hp. Parried the next attack. Full absorbed the two attacks (a double strike) after that. Next attack missed. Followed by another absorb, then two more dodges. In that time span I got healed enough to put me over 10k hp and thus able to eat another hit. And so I did, knocking me back to 1 hp. Then I parried the next attack, but couldn’t avoid the one after that. At only 119 hp I bit the dust.

I think this qualifies for now as my most impressive avoidance streak.

There was a very interesting (and informative) Ghostcrawler post this weekend that gave some some great news about Word of Glory, as well as some insight into our tanking situation.

Word of Glory now scales with either attack power or spell power, whichever is higher. The net result is that Ret and Prot Word of Glory will heal for at least 50% more than they did before. That was why we had to nerf Selfless Healer. If I am remembering correctly, a level 85 Ret or Prot paladin 3 Holy Power WoG went from around 6000 to around 9000 (before Selfless Healer or Guarded by the Light). You should test it yourself though, since I may be misremembering.

One poster on Maintankadin reports Word of Glory healing him for 25k (out of a total of health bar of almost 100k hp) multiple times while Vengeance capped. Hearing these numbers just about evaporates many concerns I have about WoG. Indeed, with a heal of that value (25%!) then the ability definitely becomes a “meaningful choice”, contra the threat of ShoR.

If you need the threat, you shield slam. Otherwise you can toss a major heal on yourself. Much better choice now.

In other news, not only is Sanctuary broken, but so is our avoidance.

As far as tank balance goes, in beta we found that DKs and Feral druids were taking less damage than paladins and warriors. This is partially because of the Sanctuary bug (where it just wasn’t working). Beyond that, the avoidance of the former were just a lot higher. Druids get dodge and DKs get parry just from wearing Agi and Str respectively. Block tanks used to get a little mitigation from Strength, but it was never much, and that won’t really work any longer with the new model. Solutions include letting Str affect parry (for everyone in the same way Agi provides dodge) or giving all plate users some kind of Forceful Deflection passive or talent.

Part and parcel is this declaration:

Basically, we think that avoidance below 20% or so doesn’t feel very good because you don’t see it, and avoidance above around 70% or so breaks encounters and forces us to add “radiance” debuffs to raids.

It’s interesting, and welcome, to get hard numbers like that. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Build 13066 also was datamined this weekend, and looking at the change there’s nothing particularly amazing. The biggest change I saw was Seals of the Pure going to 2/2 points, and Vindication going to 1/1, each shedding one point to cap. Which frees up three points for us. I think it’s safe to say they intend to trick us into putting those points into Guarded by the Light. Though, in light of the WoG change, I will gladly do that.

I’m currently looking into a spec like this, with those last points (plus the one in Hallowed Ground) going to some combination of Hallowed Ground, Reckoning, Eternal Glory, or Rule of Law. I’m certain it will depend if I’m doing an AOE threat or single target threat or survival build. Also depends on the relative TPS value of those talents.

We had probably our best farm night in, well, forever in ICC-25 last night. Thanks to the 15% buff we steamrolled through the Lower Spire, then knocked over (or picked back up, however you want to term it) Dreamwalker, then smashed through the Blood Wing, then finally demolished the Plague Wing. Three hours are the first pull we had 10/12 bosses down, killing everything we have on farm. This completely frees up tonight for three hours of Progression Fun Time. I’m very happy.

Perhaps one of the best parts of the night was our third, and last, attempt on BQL. By all accounts we should have wiped on this attempt. Towards the end one of the dps died and one bite was put on the offtank, another on a healer in the last wave because the biters were going to get MC’d. We missed the enrage timer at the end, so Lana’thel turns gigantic, angry and red.

Seconds earlier I popped an armor pot, then as the timer hit zero I popped both my trinkets (Glyph and Key) for extra dodge and some damage absorption. Stupidly, I had Forbearance on me from popping Divine Shield when someone got feared right next to me during the second air phase. Locked out of my bubble, I basically prayed. This is what happened:

Somehow, I avoided every melee hit (except for the one that killed me and proc’d AD). I took some heavy hits from Shroud of Sorrow, but that wasn’t so bad for me. For everyone else, it pretty much blew them up immediately.

Anyway, the point being: behold(!) the improbable power of avoidance. It doesn’t always know you exist, but can be amazing when its golden countenance doth shine down upon thee.

Revenge of Sunwell Radiance!

For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets.

So upon stepping into Icecrown I will have 5.09% dodge. Oh my.

Not to mention block capping will also be impossible in there.

You know what that means, right? MOAR STAM! Rather than marginalizing effective health as a tank metric, they’ve made it just about the only tank metric left. Good job, Blizzard.

Oh, and even better! Because we’ll have more consistent, predictable damage–rather than the occasional 20k hits–block will become that much more potent a mechanic. Block tanks always thrive against smaller hits.

Funniest line in Blizz’s statement?

Going forward past Icecrown Citadel, we have plans to keep tank avoidance from growing so high again.

I’ve heard that before!

Edit: At second inspection, this explains the crazy dodge in our t10 4pc bonus.

• Agility: The amount of agility required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This change required recalibrating the amount of dodge a player has with 0 agility by a slight amount as well, so all players will see their dodge percentage vary a small amount.
• Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.
• Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.

Ach!

So three things to take away from this: Avoidance will be decreasing across the board by a significant number (and by significant I mean non-trivial, I may be being a bit dramatic in my word choice), Agility will end up being a worse avoidance stat than Defense, and Parry gems won’t automatically be a bad-tank red flag anymore (alas).

Before this change:

• 39.35 dodge rating was 1% dodge
• 49.18 parry rating was 1% parry
• 52.08 agility was 1% dodge

And now the numbers are:

• 45.25 dodge rating is 1% dodge
• 45.25 parry rating is 1% parry
• 59.89 agility is 1% dodge

Defense remains 123 rating as 1% dodge, 1% parry, and 1% miss (aka 3% avoidance, so 41 rating per 1% avoidance).

So, now that I vomited up all these numbers, what does this mean? For gems, the values of avoidance per gem are now (and I’m using values of 8, because as we discussed before, all your gems should have 12 stam as half of their worth):

• 8 parry is .18% avoidance
• 8 dodge is .18% avoidance
• 8 def is .19% avoidance (.064% dodge, parry, and miss)
• 8 agi is .13% avoidance (.146% with Kings)

Thus, shockingly, Enduring gems are now the best for avoidance out of all four. Before this change, Regal gems were worth .20% avoidance, but no more. And agility gems will no longer be close enough to justify using them over pure dodge. This doesn’t mean you want to start filling red slots with Endurings come 3.2, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Ultimately it makes sense that they would nerf avoidance, considering how the next tier of gear will make us even harder to hit. I’m not happy that I’ll be losing avoidance come next patch, but it’s not the end of the world.

One major caveat emptor: All these numbers I’ve cited are before diminishing returns. YMMV depending on how much avoidance you are currently rocking. (E.g., miss suffers a steep DR decline, so at a certain point dodge makes up for the .01% deficient and you’ll get more avoidance per point with dodge than defense.)