What made them so great before 4.0.1 was that agility was a triple-dip stat for us: dodge, armor, and crit/threat all in one tidy little package. While agility gems only provided 83% as much avoidance as the actual-dodge alternative, that 17% gap was easily made up (and then some) with the armor and threat. Now, obviously, the threat alone doesn’t make it as worth it.

As such, I definitely recommend you swap out that Shifting Dreadstones for Defender’s Dreadstones if you’re looking for more avoidance (and survivability), since parry is our only avoidance choice for purple gems.

Contrawise, if you’re looking for extra threat–and, it can be argued, survivability on Sindragosa–you can gem Guardian’s Dreadstones for expertise.

Personally I’m going to gem Guardian’s Dreadstones because that 60 parry rating I’ll be gaining will primarily go into the starving, gaping maw we call diminishing returns. At 85 it’s another story, but for now I’m opting for the expertise.

In Cataclysm, block capping is going to be amazing, if only because it’s going to be like having a cooldown up for every physical hit. With a successful block now reducing any physical hit by 30%, you want to be block capped. (Of course, that also means there’s a cap on our Mastery, because any further dodge/parry once block capped pushes block chance off the combat table, but that’s an issue for another day.)

So the goal is 102.4% total avoidance+base miss chance+block. How feasible in that in my gear set at 80?

Here’s where I was in terms of avoidance and mitigation when standing in front of the Reforger NPC.

46.42% avoidance + 5% base miss + 21% block (5% base + 16% for learning Mastery) = 72.42% avoidance and block. 29.98% short.

I then proceeded to reforge every feasible piece to mastery. Dodge converted over if there was more dodge on the piece, parry otherwise, and equipped the Heroic CTC and reforged that to mastery as well. I attempted to keep dodge and parry at least even, but I had so much more dodge rating that diminishing returns made it so I got a lot more mastery from dodge.

I then dodged over to a dummy, buffed, and put up Holy Shield. This is what I had:

At 42.03% dodge+parry I lost a total of 4.39% avoidance and gained 24.35% block chance from Mastery.

So, with the 42.03% avoidance + 5% base miss + 60.35% block chance, I was at 107.53% avoidance+block. 5.13% over block cap.

Not too shabby.

I’m actually at the point where I should reduce how much Mastery I have, because that 5.13% overage is just wasted block chance. To mitigate this I can swap the Heroic CTC for a stamina trinket, and then dial back some of the Mastery.

Actually, I’m really liking the extra control reforging gives us over our gear and stats. To be able to shuffle around secondary stats like this is pretty cool.

Anyway, once I hit 81 the ratings conversions will shoot through the roof and block capping will disappear until at least the first raid tier (at least according to the calculations done by Zarko in this thread) but I’m excited at being able to taste such amazing damage reduction potential for the next two months.

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?