Hidden armor formula change brings the pain
It wasn’t enough of an insult that they gutted the precious armor from many of our pieces, but now it’s been confirmed in this terrifying thread on the tanking forums that the new armor formula for Cataclysm mobs and bosses has been retroactively applied to 81-83 mobs in WotLK content.
The old formula for damage reduction from armor was:
Reduction = Armor / (Armor + MobLevel * 467.5 - 22167.5)
And the new formula for Cataclysm is:
Reduction = Armor / (Armor + MobLevel * 2167.5 - 158167.5)
The rub is that the latter is now being applied to 81, 82, and raid boss creatures. Coupling this with the loss of armor itemization and other damage reduction talents, and you have some very vulnerable tanks in raid settings. I’m sure many of you have already seen some much higher numbers last week in Icecrown that you weren’t seeing two weeks ago before 4.0.1 dropped.
I’m very curious to see if there’s going to be a blue response to this or if we’re just supposed to deal with it until December. My understanding is a similar thing happened with 2.0 and 3.0, but I wasn’t raiding at the end of Vanilla or TBC, so I really can’t speak to that. Anyone have any idea?
In any case, I’m equally dreading and cannot wait for raid Tuesday to see how ICC25 goes again.
Update: GC posted in the thread and proceeded to completely miss the point
Agility no longer provides armor. Is that what you’re seeing here? I didn’t see that mentioned in the discussion, but I might have missed it.
Ah, nope.
Hopefully after receiving further responses he went to do some testing of his own. Maybe there’ll be a hotfix. Well, I doubt it, but a man can dream.
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@PinkRaidFrames
18 October 2010 at 10:52 am #
Well, this explains at least in part why I am getting absolutely destroyed in our 25 man raids.
There is no way I should be getting 2-shot by RS trash with my current gear.
Very frustrating night last night.
@PinkRaidFrames
18 October 2010 at 10:59 am #
To make this a bit more understandable (if my math isn’t bad)…
With 30k armor in the old model your damage reduction from armor would have been 64%.
With the new model and the same numbers that dips to 57%.
This explains a lot: I saw my damage reduction was a lot lower, but I thought this was just due to the lower bonus armour.
However, how do we build the new block model into this analysis? Surely blocking 30% of all melee hits is much more powerful than the fixed amount pre-4.01? This must offset a good portion of the armour nerf for heavy hitting bosses.
[...] October 19, 2010 at 12:04 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment As described here, the armor formula has changed from [...]
As far as 3.0 goes, our guild went from being unable to down Gruul to one-shotting him, along with KT, who we hadn’t even seen at that point. I don’t recall the tanks getting clobbered nearly as bad as it is now. And man is it bad.
sorry for off topic but have to ask: I have problems seeing spells on ground, and it happens only in some areas not in all.
for example i see my cons in SW but dont see it in IF.
Anyone knows why is that?
thanks.
@Rhidach
18 October 2010 at 1:01 pm #
It’s a bug that a lot of people have been getting. Try updating your video drivers and make sure projected textures is turned on in your video options.
Yeh I’m having same problem, with setting turned to ultra and updated drivers….i was reading through forums, and blizz knows about it, and said they will fix it in a future patch…whether that is this tuesday i don’t know…
@PinkRaidFrames
18 October 2010 at 1:13 pm #
Make sure your “Emphasize my spell effects” is turned off. After a nightmare in RS 25 last night we finally figured this out. It’s under Interface > Display.
But that won’t fix it alone. You also must do what Rhidach said.
@Rhidach
18 October 2010 at 1:21 pm #
Great tip too, Doxa.
Sidenote: I know you went to Blizzcon last year (or, I think you did). Are you going this year?
@PinkRaidFrames
18 October 2010 at 1:26 pm #
Nah, I don’t have quite as many FF miles banked from work this year as I did last year. I guess that’s a good thing. :-)
this is some sad news, thanks for posting rhidach… you know what else is sad, even with a shield, armor enchants, the organ, and devo on, still have less armor than my DK counterpart…nice how pretty DKs are sitting…
Not necessarily. The first thing I did after visiting my trainer and rebuilding my spec was hit the reforger and turn a ton of avoidance into mastery. My healers report I’m about as easy to heal as before, whereas my DK counterparts are getting hit a lot harder.
Possible they just need to make the same move, but I’m hearing dark muttering about the unfair advantage block tanks have.
LabRat’s last blog ..Vicious Circle 73
DK’s take more damage initially, yes, but they also do a significant portion of their own healing, easing the tank healer’s load. The absorb shield proc is nice, too. Of the tanks, the block tanks actually seem worse off, partially because it seems that armor is not reducing the damage taken from a blocked hit.
@DPShaw3
18 October 2010 at 5:31 pm #
I’m experiencing the same thing. I’ve been tempted to open boss fights with a single crusader strike, then ShoR to get my holy shield going just to make sure the mitigation from that extra block, is up, because I have had some fights (especially PuGs with tank swaps where it takes the tank healer a moment to switch over to me from the other tank) where I am seeing much steeper damage numbers than before.
Yeah, I’m definitely taking more damage, but I just packed on enough mastery to get block capped. Also turned all my agi+stam to Parry+stam for lack of anything better to do with it.
I seriously doubt the blues are going to make any changes. The fights are still within reason and fights can be overhealed with the obscene DPS numbers people are pulling. Biggest adjustment is tank healing needing more diversity than one holy paladin on both tanks.
was just over at maintankadin and saw something interesting…the soft expertise cap being 22…anyone else notice this in game?