Dodge nerfed 20% in ICC
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.
Armory Feed
on my dk’s current gear (i226 badge + i232 + ony loot) that means 6.92% dodge
and on my paladin in mostly i232/245 + tier that means 6.40% dodge
OUCH
time to go farm naxxramas for http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40372
also, i have a question, since they are nerfing avoidance in this way, wouldn’t it increase the value of avoidance? my intial reaction is that stam/armor become the true uncontested kings but still… would avoidance/stam trinket duo be better than stam/stam?
my thinking is going along the lines of the bosses (i admit i have not checked the PTR version of boss abilities known so far) hitting for smaller amounts than they do now (or similar levels) and having some godawful major strike that hits for like a huge amount of hp or something. Dual-wield mobs? small fast hitting bosses/mobs?
my only real tanking experience is wrath raiding so compared to previous expansions my knowledge of boss mechanics may be severely lacking but that is my line of thinking.
@Rhidach
29 October 2009 at 2:08 pm #
Well, from what I recall from TBC, when Sunwell Radiance nerfed avoidance in that raid, Bears became the best MTs because they had far and away the most EH and thus were the easiest to heal. That also may have been because Crushing Blows were turned off for those bosses, and so all the health that Bears had to compensate for an CB immunity was free hp.
Nonetheless, it naturally gelled that EH was the best tanking metric in Sunwell, and I’m sure the same will emerge in ICC. I mean, EH is already king, but now it’ll be even more so.
armor gems? gasp!
I am already at that standpoint then, if EH will be king no question, as I am sure a lot of people are. Armor enchant on cloak, PvP enchant on shoulders, health enchant to chest, stam enchant on shield/gloves, and using the i245 Q’S hehe.
And also, in one of the many threads on the tanking forum, one recurring argument was that if tank avoidance is at such high levels then why were no measures taken against it?
for example, the tribute cloaks are loaded with avoidance stats, the tribute weapons are loaded with avoidance stats. They have no threat stats other than str (which we triple dip into for AP, SBV and SP). These cloaks could easily have been stuffed with threat stats – more str (? possibly), hit/exp, or take a step away from general stat allocation to give agi?
from all i have read on TBC tanking, sunwell radiance was a bandaid fix to a design flaw. and it seems that while blizzard recognized the problems then, they have not found a solution to that problem, or rather have managed to get in over themselves.
Some things that fix this, in my opinion, would have been to “standardize” loot from bosses. That is, KT/Maly should not be dropping i226 gear (it makes sense on drake runs however since each drake adds an extra layer of complexity to the fight) for example. It jut set a precedent in my opinion. Take ulduar, normal difficulty drops i219/i226 gear and hard modes drop i232/i239 gear. it’s a recurring problem in WoTLK that gear inflation just increases more and more with each new content of difficulty. And this is an ongoing discussion almost everywhere – whether on blogs/resource sites/official forums or wherever.
@Rhidach
29 October 2009 at 3:47 pm #
Great point. Blizz really did screw the pooch on this one.
I think though you don’t have to regem/enchant away from Dodge. That 5% dodge or whatever that survives being chilled away will be all the more valuable when the majority of its ilk is gone.
It was pretty obvious that this was coming.
I personally stack stamina about as aggressively as possible, I’m over 46k unbuffed hp, and I’m still at roughly 70% raidbuffed avoidance, all in. So, this avoidance nerf only really pushes it back to 50%, which is a MUCH more reasonable number for Blizzard to tune around, especially as Icecrown gear is probably going to push that into the 60% range again.
If Blizzard had to plan around 80% avoidance tanks, and the correspondingly low 4% chance to take back to back hits, they’d either have to play ToC-esque “Avoidance doesn’t matter” games, or melee bosses would hit unreasonably hard. Like in the ballpark of 50k post mitigation.
This is liable to lead to better boss design. We’ll take more hits, and have smoother mana income (rage income for the others is even more prone to avoidance streaks, this helps everyone out), the random melee will be a little bit more reasonable, with a 25% expectation of back-to-back hits. Odds on that means a heavy hitting boss hits for ~35k or so, post mitigation, on the standard 2s swing timer, leaving a very healable gap of only about 10k.
This does severely penalize the value of avoidance stacking, though, as you’ll still be pushing against DRs, only to have a flat percentage removed. Back in Sunwell, bosses like Brutallus still rewarded stacking avoidance, because the Sunwell Radiance effect wasn’t double-penalizing with DRs on avoidance (even though every other boss pretty much became an EH check), If Icecrown has a Brutallus, though, with the prevalance of cooldowns available, and Icecrown Radiance double-penalizing avoidance, I think it’s highly unlikely that avoidance stacking will have any merit left whatsoever.
@Rhidach
29 October 2009 at 4:03 pm #
I think Wrathy is being hardest hit by this, haha.
I agree though, I applaud this step away from crazy-brink-of-death tanking to something a little less break-neck.
quick clarification – if the CotT effect is removing the dodge after DR’s isn’t that worse than having it remove the dodge before DR’s?
well i actually like the brink-of-death tanking as you put it :P
makes it more of an adrenaline rush hehe
Think of it like this. Tanks – especially Paladins – have been saying “GIve me more buttons to push!” for mitigation. Well – now you have them, but in the form of trinkets.
As far as the Tribute stuff – GC specifically said that if they hadn’t put that gear in, this wouldn’t have been necessary. Also, smaller – more even hits – give tanks that aren’t in full 245/258 gear to have a fighting chance. Othersiwse – POOP! 50k slips through and beans you.
I’ve been an EH tank since Vanilla. It’s the way dad did it, it’s the way America does it…and it’s worked out pretty well so far (thank you Tony Stark).
I’m just glad I have my King Lane’s parry trinket. Although it didn’t seem to help him much against that assassin now did it…hmm..
Arthas had a self buff that negated all avoidance from parry
oh wait… reference fail on my part. i was thinking Terenas instead of Llane.
well in that case then, Garona eviscerated him from behind. Cuz rogues do it from behind!
What an amusing path to gearing from scratch people would have.
They should have just changed the ratings the avoidance stats provided.
Your still going to gear avoidance for non icecrown, it seems you would purposely gear for items you cannot later value in order to gear more now than ever.
the values change based on the content in general and boss fights in particular. hence why most tanks maintain several pieces of gear that they do not generally use in their “main tanking” set. i have started this and so far my block set is pretty handy in AV for tanking drek hehe. i am not upto anub on heroic any time soon so that block set is mostly just a fun set.
@hpavc: Err… most of us geared pure EH from the beginning of this expansion, this change just cements it. Don’t get me wrong, I MISS balancing avoidance stats, but progression dictated EH, and now does so even more.
Well, can´t say we didnt see that one coming.
“Sunwell radiance was just a setback”
Anyway, this just reaffirms their “You know, we dont want tanks to just stack stamina, but well, go do that, since we took your hit rating away, and gev you items with craploads of stamina and expertise (and we knew you were already soft capped) so, go go 80k unbuffed tanks!”
Love, GC.
so… I guess thats it, start wearing plate dps gear for welll… “fun”