First 4.0.1 happened, and killed agility converting to armor. While the little guy was wounded, he kept crawling along, still boosting our dodge chance (along with our crit, but that’s neither here nor there).
Now, according to the latest PTR notes, the second benefit of agility for tanking — the 304.5 agility = 1% dodge conversion — is kaput. Someone kick up taps for me please.
Dodge: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors no longer receive any bonus to their chance to dodge from Agility. Their base chance to dodge is now a fixed 5%.
This also, as said, changes our base dodge from 3.6520% to a straight 5%. That’s a 1.375% buff for most at base for most tankadins, outside of any additional agility one might have in your kit.
I can see why they did this, it was surely antithetical to their design to have Paladins, for instance, running around with the Necklace of Strife equipped because it was better combat table coverage than something they actually specifically itemized for them.
Anyway, various consequences that come to mind:
1. Need to nab and bank some strength tank necks/rings/other pieces for 4.2.
2. Kings and Horn of Winter won’t be as nearly as potent for buffing avoidance.
3. When reforging you’ll want to keep dodge and parry at closer percents. Actually–scratch that–dodge probably still a little higher to compensate only for the additional parry you’ll gain from strength raid buffs.
4. We won’t be able to stack additional mastery through dps agi/mastery gear any longer. Which I’m sure the rogues, hunters, and feral druids out there will welcome.
5. Great point from Shathus: Charscale Leg Armor‘s agility is now dead weight. I’m guessing they’ll have to fix this, as great as the bonus crit would be.
Farewell, old friend. For good this time.
Hello, math nazi here!
5 – 3.6520 = 1.348, not 0.248, at least in decimal math. If you do proper percent calculation, I’m royally screwed, ’cause I suck at that (my dad knows the math to do it properly, but he’s not around ;))
Other than that… Well, I think your guide also suggests stacking strength, nonetheless ;)
I was basing my personal math off the additional agility I have from my neck piece, if that’s what you meant. I also realize I never finished my sentence there and let it end with a comma. I’ll just remove the personal math stuff and leave it at base.
Would we not now want Dodge to be reforged a tiny bit higher with Parry being the only avoidance to benefit from raid buffs?
Bah, brain fart, I meant dodge should be a little higher. Thanks for catching that! :D
While I understand the agility portion of that particular leg enchant would be dead weight, why the whole thing? I mean, I know stamina isn’t entirely the name of the game anymore, but wouldn’t it still be better than the only other leg enchant (AP/Crit)?
It’d still be superior over the dps enchant, but it’d be nice if it was changed to stam/dodge, perhaps.
You know, I’m happy about that change. Always felt iffy about picking up agility pieces and bad to prefer strength ones at the cost of my survival.
So, bye bye agility, if I’d like to tank with you, I’d rolled a druid. XD
Charscale Leg Armor: I’ll place my wager on the Agi/Stam becoming Dodge/Stam.
Oi! Us Enhancement Shaman also welcome more agi/mastery gear thank you very much!
On a related note: good to know, just before starting to gear up my own prot pally. Thanks for the heads up!
Do you think we’ll see more dodge on items then? I always end up with at least a % more parry than dodge, but buffing should have normalized this a bit.
In combination with block cap being out of reach we’ll never gem for dodge as it is a yellow stat like mastery, whereas parry as a red stat can always get some combo gem love.