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.)

Check these out (from mmo-champion.com):

This is a serious upgrade to Monarch Crab. Right now I have my crab gemmed with a Solid Sky Sapphire and a Solid Dragon’s Eye, so it’s giving me 138 stamina and has the on-use proc for 300. The Heart is definitely a bump up on both counts.

This is like the Essence of Gossamer without the stamina. It’s nice, but I’d rather have the Heart of Iron. This is definitely a better fit in a trash set, since 205 damage being shaved off won’t be that much help when you’re taking multi-thousand HP hits.

But let’s talk about dodge. Right now I have 305 dodge rating, or 21% dodge. It’s not that much, but I’m already feeling my returns a-diminishing.

With these two trinkets equipped and procced, I’m looking at some serious lost dodge. I’m terrible at math but it looks like around 4% avoidance will just outright disappear.

How much avoidance are we going to see on gear in T9?