Interesting stuff!
Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.
Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.
These two together are interesting: it seems like the effort is being put into tank’s time to live deriving less from health and armor mitigation (aka effective health) and more from other stats. I’m not sure how I feel about, or at least understand, declarations like stamina and armor will be similar across tanks and non-tanks alike. I suppose reforging and enchants/gems will expand that gap, but it’s sort of weird.
Block Rating - Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.
Shield Block Value - This stat will no longer be present on items, since the amount blocked is always proportional to the amount of damage done. Talents and other effects might still modify the damage-reduction percentage from 30%, however.
Makes sense, they were talking about bringing Block down so you couldn’t go through a heroic with like no damage while a Druid or DK would be dealing with a lot more pain.
Parry - Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). In other words, Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.
This is the most interesting change, I think, and definitely the most unexpected. A smart idea to change Parry so it isn’t just a carbon copy of Dodge. I like this implementation, although I’m assuming that damage reduction is just applied to the next physical melee attack.
Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.
Operative phrase here being “versus creatures.” So a Ret or Holy Paladin can’t slap on RF and be crit immune in pvp. Great idea, and quells many concerns when this was first floated as a change to RF a few weeks ago.
Finally, they sum up our 4.0 gear adjustments as:
If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:
No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.
No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating.
You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.
Sounds to me like Cataclysm will change tanking to be less EH-centric and more diversifying out toolset so avoidance (as we now know it) along with the new Parry and Block mechanics are worthwhile in a raid situation. Awesome.
Not really related to progression, but the block changes are a little disheartening when you think about soloing dated content. No longer will we be able to solo old instances and take practically no damage.
Overall though, the changes look awesome!
Now if only plate wearers could get some crit from their strength like the agility and intellect users will get from their primary stat.
That is annoying! And not to mention we’ll no longer be able to pull a huge pack out in the wild and slowly aoe it down over time.
I agree I’m happy with the changes overall. Especially because it looks like they’re trying to make tanking more “complicated” stats-wise by giving a second life to dodge/parry/block. Stam stacking won’t be the name of the game anymore.
Honestly the armor changes make no sense to me. How is it that cloth can offer as much protection as plate or mail now? I can understand mail, plate and leather to some extent, but cloth?
.-= Tijeras’s last blog ..Protadin: @Karaiyn Unfortunately no. It’s a team that is being phased out. The contract expired. =-.
“Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.”
I take this to mean ‘between Ret paladins and mages’. Also see: “You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to”. The item on Bears is in line with these changes as well: “A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.”
As for armor, I’m not exactly sure how that will work at the extremes. I’m at 23k armor in my healing set (Mail feet) while a paladin tank at similar ilvl is at 30k armor and a mage is at 2.3k armor. Will mages feel less squishy? Will paladin healers feel more squishy? How will new damage mechanics affect the design of tank armor values?
All very interesting to think about and all way too early to worry about.
About the armor concerns: Many people on the official forums have been bringing this up as well. Eyonix clarified this in a later post:
“Plate will still possess much more armor than cloth, the difference just wont be as significant as it is now. “
These sound like interesting changes. My first question was how savage defense for druid will be working, but no talk about that I’ve noticed. If it remains the same as it is, that could mean druids could become the prefered trash (or old content) tanks mittigation wise.
I wonder though if they’re making a wise choice with the parry mechanic. If you parry now it’s 100% reduction, done. If you parry twice in a row, that’s 2x 100% reduction. If you parry twice in a row with the new mechanic it would mean you lose 50% of the mittigation from the first parry.
I would assume that the parry mechanic would work like this (my interpretation, uncorroborated):
Boss is swinging for 10000.
Tank parries swing 1. Takes 5000.
Tank parries swing 2. Takes 2500.
Tank does not mitigate swing 3. Takes 5000.
Damage resumes as normal.
My concern, is what happens if you parry and then dodge? Does the next swing you don’t dodge get the damage reduction of the parry? Still so many unanswered questions.
What I am really hoping is that they’ve come up with some way either via mastery or talents to give us a proper mana regeneration mechanism. Divine Plea being reset by each hit is nice but the whole mechanic feels like a stop-gap band-aid fix rather than being something relatively comprehensive like Ret’s Judgments of the Wise. Additionally it doesn’t come along until you’re into your 70s so tanking earlier on is a bit of a pain. Plus it can be a real pain especially in heroics where the packs are often spread just enough that it drops off while moving between them, and with an overgeared group the packs go down so fast that the cooldown on the ability hasn’t finished. It’s fine most of the time but the rest of the time it’s frustrating.
I just don’t know how a weapon (parry) can absorb more damage than a shield (block) when is suppose that the shield protect you more than your weapon i don’t know they don’t make sense….i think they need to let the game like it is it.
Boooooo block changes. Gone will be the day where you can round up over 9000(!) mobs and laugh maniacally as you whittle them all down.
That’s why I switched from a bear tank to a paladin tank in TBC. I wasn’t a hardcore raider, I was a 5 man tank and I had AOE tanking/grinding envy. My first favorite paladin tanking trait is going the way of the dodo.
/cry
While all of this is interesting, there’s definitely some unanswered questions. For example, the block change: Paladins and Warriors are essentially getting an RNG-based 30% physical DR. Will DKs and Druids get something to compensate, such as a boost to armor or DR? Or will there be more magical damage to compensate?
Another thing of curiosity is the rising health pools in general. With everyone (but the tanks) getting a higher health pool, Blizzard will be free to spread more damage around the raid. Is this what we could be seeing?
.-= Hal’s last blog ..Forging science in the CRUcible =-.
@Lanaka – From the post:
“Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all).”
If you Parry one, and dodge the next the half damage doesn’t slide to the next attack. The way this is worded though, it sounds like you could dodge and parry hit 1, leaving hit 2 to be a %50 damage hit.
@Shaibachan
Right. I forgot that part. While I have doubts that you can dodge AND parry the same swing, the point about dodging hit 2 eating up the DR from the first swing being parried makes sense. Sucks, especially if dodge and parry rating still scales how they do today, but hopefully that’s addressed.
I think blizz messed up with DK tanks and that they will put more focus on them in new expansion.
regarding block which will reduce icoming dmg by 30%, I feel the same, like blizz messed with block totaly and try to fix it in the way that noone will ever stack block rating anymore, it will be allways dodge/parry. So if u will be block capped, u will dodge/parry more attacks than what u will block, and take less dmg.
ofc above is under assumption that dodge/parry will be skyhigh on each piece of gear, and with statement: “Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating” it seems so.
all in all, I would expect more avoidance/less dmg on tanks.
soul
When will the Rogue tank be viable?
Don’t forget that the 30% DR on block is baseline. Blizzard will probably add talents to raise that amount.