Avoidance nerfed in current ptr
- 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.)
Armory Feed
Ok, first of all, welcome back Rhy. Second: O.M.F.G…. /jawdrop These changes are quite impacting IF they do make it to live realms (And I suspect they will), DK’s will be very much back in line with other tanks, Bears will QQ like there is no tomorrow, and well, I guess Warriors and paladins will stay pretty much right where they are since it wont afect them AS MUCH as it will do to the other 2 tank classes, and because Block is getting “buffed”.
Why are they doing this to us?
They didn’t even fix up block properly as it’s still a fail mechanic for ulduar. And to add onto insult their nerfing our dodge and agility !
You can kiss those 8 agility 12 stamina gems good bye >:X
Just a recap of our stats:
Defense = Avoids getting critical striked. 540 Defense is the crit cap to avoid getting critted. 540-560 may still be useful even after your crit capped, as Defense will also contribute to avoidance stats like dodge, parry and miss.
Dodge = Dodges an attack entirely. This is the best defense.
Parry = Parries an attack to avoid it but it increases attack speed for counter attack.
Block = You take the damage but you mitigate a certain amount of damage based on your Block Value. Block value incidentally also can give you nice damage and tps using your shield slam threat smacking ability. The likelihood of block to proc is based on block rating.
So Rhi, is it safe to assume that the dodge and parry ratios should now be kept at 1:1 ratio now ?
Is the Parry mechanic worth it? I haven’t really paid much thought to parry because i focus a lot on dodge, any comments on this stat and how it works.
well i woudl say parry is worth it as long as you are going against physical damage, if you are going against magical dmg, stack STA, and then maybe dodge
@Rhidach
8 July 2009 at 11:57 pm #
Parry suffers from some pretty steep DR unfortunately, so I would favor Dodge over Parry. I’m not sure the exact numbers you want here (there’s a Theck thread out there on maintankadin) but I think the ratio is 1.8 dodge to every 1 parry.
yup, but aren’t they “equalizing” them?
@Rhidach
9 July 2009 at 8:30 am #
They are, but check out the charts in this post at maintankadin. Parry suffers a steep decline in value per point much, much earlier than dodge does. So eventually you’ll want to avoid adding parry because you won’t get as much benefit from it. Most likely the outcome of this will be: continue to gem dodge, but don’t feel bad to equip an item with parry. You’ll want to have more dodge than parry because you’ll probably be getting more bang for your buck with the former.
nvm, just re-read it, and yup then again, we will end up going for STA, Def, and dodge in that order, and any parry will be just a bonus since wue will already be gettting some from def rating.
god, you just made me feel a lot dumber after clickng on that link… T_T!
@Rhidach
9 July 2009 at 9:31 am #
Believe me, I have to take advil after reading most Theck posts.
advil? LOL
I think I´m gonna need morphine…
Ok so even though point for point it’s the same, the diminishing return remains the same as old, so you still lose out when spending on parry instead of dodge which is better bang for bucks….
Ok got it…
So what the hell is the point of the this ?
45.25 dodge rating is 1% dodge
45.25 parry rating is 1% parry
@Rhidach
9 July 2009 at 10:16 pm #
I think they wanted to rectify the problem where theorycrafters were saying NEVER gem for parry and avoid parry-heavy items if possible, because the ROI is crap compared to dodge. This way they’re somewhat equal if you don’t have much of them.
the thing is… many items have both… and hit/expertise… so… whats the point of keeping them equal on rating if the Parry DR curve is going like an acapulco cliff diver??
The point is that this is a new step in their design intention for future raids. This is a dilemma that they faced before. Coming out of the initial tier 6 content moving into patch 2.4, avoidance had hit rediculous numbers, there were tanks who were passively uncrushable, rouges and druids who were unhittable. Healing these overgeared players was trivial, ask any holy paladin what it was like to spam Flash of Light all day long.
There were two possible solutions. The first option and the one that they took for Sunwell, was to nerf avoidance and add mechanics that made healers unable to heal their tanks for certain periods. This manifested in the sunwell radiance buff, which decreased tanks miss by 5%, and their dodge by 20%. Aside from Brutallus, none of the sunwell bosses were really a threat to instagib a tank. The fights were about control, about making sure that the raid could recover from disruptions. The solution they opted not to use was to simply crank up boss damage to the point where an unavoided hit sent healers into OH SH*T mode.
Enter WotLK. Tanks in T7 gear come walking out with 50% avoidance, easily. Not quite post BT absurdity, but enough that once again, healing these tanks is a fairly trivial experience. Patch 3.1 is rolling out, and Blizzard is once again faced with the same dilemma. This time, they reversed tack, and left avoidance alone, but jacked up boss damage. Tanks die after two hits on even the most trivial bosses in the instance, such as Ignis and XT. Tank survival becomes less about the mechanics of the fight, and more about the random number gods blessing your tank with another few seconds of life. Nowhere is this more apparent than Steelbreaker on the Iron council. A worst case scenario on steelbreaker is frightening. 3k high voltage tick, 20k melee hit, 35k fusion punch, 20k melee hit, 3k high voltage tick, 20k fusion tick. All of that can happen within 3 seconds, 101k damage, and that’s before he gets supercharges if you’re leaving him up last.
The end result of this is that all that high avoidance has done in ulduar is prompt overhealing. Spamming greater heals and holy lights is the only way to keep the tank alive. If you aren’t already casting a greater heal, before the hit lands, the tank is probably gonna die before a second heal can get to him. A tank might go 15, 20, or 30 seconds doing nothing but dodging, parrying, and being missed, but the healers can’t stop bombing heals on him during that span.
The nerf to avoidance and the nerf to mana regen, along with the encounter design of patch 3.2 is designed to make healing more forgiving, but at the same time, more skill dependent.
This also has specific implications to tanking balance. On the PTR, druids were still wickedly overpowered for single target tanking, due to their natural EH advantage, combined with solid avoidance. This change, while a slight nerf to the other tanking classes, they at least gain some avoidance back through the buff to parry. This is a straight nerf to Druids, there is no silver lining for them. This seems to be intended to return druids to the old mana sponge style of tanking that they used during the crushing blow ridden era of BC. The idea behind a druid tank back then was that they got a massive EH bonus because while Pallys and Warriors could push crushing blows off the table, Druids had to eat them. This led to druids becoming somwhat overpowered on bosses that did not crush, and this OP status persisted throughout Wrath, where EH was pretty much the only thing that mattered for fights like OS3D.
@Rhidach
13 July 2009 at 9:19 am #
Great summary TRM! I agree 100% with your assessment.
To the Pally on our server said he would be aiming to keep Parry 1% below dodge% as his ratio.
Hm ….. but i still got an itch to pump out on the dodge >_<: Oh well just wait for more info to maintankadin.