Chill of the Throne: Dodge nerfed 20% in Icecrown Citadel
by Adam Holisky 
Oct 29th 2009 at 2:18PM
So while dodge will be nerfed, the ceiling on damage given to a tank will likely decrease. This will in turn, at least theoretically, make healing more about strategy (applying HoTs and planning heals) and less reactive (twitch response to apply the biggest heal at exactly the right time).
This is interesting to note as it's a move towards the Cataclysm way of tanking, as has been explained by Ghostcrawler: less avoidance on tanks, less spike damage, and thus requiring smaller heals.
Daelo's and Ghostcrawler's full statements after the break.
This post is currently being edited.
From Daelo:
Ghostcrawler has also chimed in: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 if a raid's main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%.
Why are we doing this?
The high levels of tank avoidance players have obtained is making the incoming damage a tank DOES take more "spiky" than is healthy for raiding. Ideally, tanks would be receiving a relatively constant stream of damage over time. This allows healers to better plan their healing strategy, broaden their spell options, and simply give more time to react. Tanks could use their cooldowns more reactively. Instead, the current situation is that if we make a hard hitting melee boss and a tank doesn't avoid two successive swings then the tank could very well be dead in that 1-2 second window. The use of reactive defensive abilities instead becomes a methodically planned affair, healers have to spam their largest heals just in case the huge damage spike happens.
We've been trying to do a fair amount to mitigate the effect of high tank avoidance on the encounter side of things during this expansion with faster melee swings, additional melee strikes, dual wielding, narrowing the normal variance of melee swing damage, and various other tricks. There's a limit to what we can do, however. So to give us a bit of breathing room we've implemented Chill of the Throne. Going forward past Icecrown Citadel, we have plans to keep tank avoidance from growing so high again.
We'll have this on the PTR soon so players can see the effects inside Icecrown Raid.
Additional relevant statement from Ghostcrawler yesterday:Our original estimations for tank avoidance would have worked fine had we not decided to add extra tiers of gear to reward heroic boss kills halfway through the expansion.
The Cataclysm design will keep tank avoidance at more manageable levels. The loss of defense skill counts for a lot right there. We are also considering giving bosses expertise or other ways of baking in Icewell Radiance -- basically the concept that bosses scale with gear rather than just hitting harder and taking more hits.
What I would like to see in Cataclysm is higher health pools but also lower heals (and tank avoidance) overall. Hopefully everyone won't be on the verge of almost dying, yet the risk of overhealing will be more real such that you can't just madly spam all of the time if you want to make it to the end of the encounter.
Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.Filed under: Patches, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
sikyon Oct 29th 2009 2:23PM
For anyone who doesn't understand this article, basically blizzard is saying they are going to reduce dodge effecitvness and also reduce boss damage, so your tanks don't get 1 shotted.
Leonffs Oct 29th 2009 5:21PM
Except that it absolutely slams Druids and is not as bad on Death knights and Paladins
Skonged Oct 29th 2009 5:28PM
Looks like Druid tanks are going to be even more scarce than ever. Paladin and DK tanks will be more popular than ever.
They took our Joeabes!
Chuck Oct 29th 2009 5:53PM
While I think this will discourage a lot of druid tanks, I know I'll still Bear tank.
I'm sad though, i'll only have 35% dodge raid buffed :(
Regardless, most druids have a ridiculous amount of Dodge if they're geared, and the fact that we'll take more consistent damage, and still have the highest Health Pools of all the other tanks should be no reason to get rid of your BARE TANK!
While sure, 20% is a lot for our only avoidance stat, remember that most end game druids peak around 65k HP right now. I know in raids I have 61k HP, and I have a feeling i'll still be a great tank choice for Icecrown.
The fact that Druids can take the most consecutive hits (not misses or dodges) without dying compared to any other tank still makes them great end-game/progression tanks for many fights.
While I am still a little pissed, it's not the end of the world. I'm still going to MT and have fun doing it successfully.
Thoraxes of Wildhammer.
Alden Oct 29th 2009 6:51PM
For druids complaining that this will "kill druid tanks" please spend just a minute to think about this.
Outside of Icecrown
DK- 25% Dodge, 25% Parry = 50% Avoidance
Druid- 50% Dodge, 0% Parry (obviously) = 50% avoidance
Inside Icecrown:
DK- 5% Dodge, 25% Parry = 30% Avoidance (20% loss)
Druid- 30% Dodge, still 0% parry = 30% avoidance. (20% loss)
The ONLY case of any interest would be a tank that has less than 20% dodge (And I have yet to meet a progression tank since naxx 10 that had less than 20% dodge)
If there was such a tank, lets say a DK, then this would be how it would look:
Outside of Icecrown:
15% Dodge, 25% Parry = 40% Avoidance
Inside Icecrown:
0% dodge, 25% Parry = 25% Avoidance (15% loss)
Lesson: As long as tanks have at least 20% dodge, this will affect them equally. The only people who really get IMBA from this are tanks with less than 20% dodge (and you want them tanking for you why?)
While I'm no expert, I think there are three "styles" of tanks
Large health pool- Druid
High avoidance- DK
Lots of mitigation (shield block)- Warrior, Pally
Thus, a "nerf" to Health would hurt druids the most, a 20% HP might be 8,000 HP for a DK, Pally, or Warrior, for a druid that might be 10-12k health lost. Since they have the most HP, a flat % reduction would leave druids with the same less relative value, but less absolute HP.
A HP "nerf" would hurt druids the most.
Likewise, a mitigation "nerf" would hurt pallys and warriors the most.
This impending avoidance "nerf" will hurt DK's the most.
Spend a few minutes mulling this over before downrating, mmmmk?
Kir Oct 29th 2009 10:45PM
To reply to Alden:
Lots of mitigation (shield block)- Warrior, Pally
While bears lack the great damage reducing moves of a Pally and Warrior using cooldowns, while such moves are down bears have the highest mitigation around and by a rather sizable amount. We're still the only tank capable of hitting the armor cap, though admittedly you need raid buffed and perhaps an armor trinket for that to happen short of ToGC, it is a moot point since a bear who hit eighty that day and is in all blues and crafted iLevel 200 gear will have a higher base damage mitigation through armor than a paladin/warrior in full ToC 25 gear.
On top of that, bears have the most consistent "block" percentage and short of another tank stacking all block value gear, they also have the highest value to block [high-end bears block ~2k, 50%+ of the time] via Savage Defense. And then our own ghetto shield block move in Bark Skin.
Then, as you said, we're already 10k HP minimum above our paladin friends in BiS gear. So yeah, while I agree with your post and found it to be well-put, nothing mitigates damage [physical, anyway] like a bear or even approaches it.
Morighan Oct 29th 2009 10:46PM
This will have interesting implications for DK threat. ~40% reduction in the number of Rune Strikes for most high-geared DK tanks.
Shrike Oct 30th 2009 3:34AM
If druids end up with less avoidance than other tanks after this effect, they had less avoidance before this effect.
Druid tanking effectiveness is based on having ridiculous gobs of health, which will get MORE USEFUL as boss damage goes down.
DKs take the biggest hit from this, as they lose a big chunk of threat from fewer dodge-triggered Rune Strikes.
And EVERYONE who posts about block as if it is comparable needs to check their heads. Block is a mitigation stat (and an inconsistent, crappy and mostly worthless one at that), not an avoidance stat. You can only effectively calculate avoidance on dodge vs. dodge+parry.
Noumoudy Oct 29th 2009 2:26PM
Nice. A nerf that effectively acts as a buff. This should make being a healadin much easier. Waiting for holy light to finally drop on a tank that's lost all of the hp in the casting time is agonizing.
Slaytanic Oct 29th 2009 2:35PM
Spamming 10k FoL crits ftw. ;)
Byron Oct 29th 2009 5:47PM
Heh, it's agonizing for the tank too. ;)
Docseuzz Oct 29th 2009 2:26PM
They had to do the same thing for sunwell.... you would have figured they'd have learned from the past.... :)
Azurogg Oct 29th 2009 2:32PM
Blizzard only planned for 4 tiers of gear when they were balancing stats for LK. Instead, we ended up with 8 tiers which lead to much faster scaling of stats for all classes. So basically, they did learn from the past, they just didn't plan very well for the future.
Kurash Oct 29th 2009 3:04PM
Also, if I recall correctly, part of the dodge debuff in Sunwell was to counter avoidance tanking -- rogues, for example, who stacked dodge and other avoidance stats to the point where they were literally unable to be hit by a boss. DPS, tank, and no heals required all in one package!
breaklance Oct 29th 2009 4:04PM
Even with the avoidance DR tanks are capable of "not being hit" to a degree. A lot of warrior tanks for HM Anub are stacking BR gear so that the only hit they receive is a blocked hit. While it leaves them at 35k hp its for tanking adds only, since bosses hit so hard even blocking every hit will still 1 shot a tank.
IMO Stats are out of control in LK which is why they are revamping it so much in Cata. 50% crit, while being hard capped hit, is ridiculous considering in BT dps wasn't getting to that level untill the final tier of gear while we've been at that arguably since Naxx. Also for healers, their regen is so high than even spamming their biggest heal, they can last an entire fight before they oom.
Nick S Oct 29th 2009 4:28PM
Icecrown Radiance!
Happened before, probably gonna happen again. Oh well. It'll be really nice as a healer, at least.
Rhabella Oct 29th 2009 2:26PM
They had how long to come up with a more sophisticated solution to Sunwell radiance and they chose to do a take 2? When the most creative thing they could come up with was something the developers themselves said, essentially, was a copout how could they not have planned for this before Wrath launch?
BuzzDX Oct 29th 2009 2:29PM
Better than nothing, eh?
Besides, if you re-read Daelo's statement, at the end, he says they have plans to make sure tank avoidance doesn't get too high in the future.
zappo Oct 29th 2009 3:04PM
I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that there really wasn't much of a gear reset this expansion. That means by the time you scale up everything to get past the top level gear of the last expansion, you're probably still looking at starting scaling in the wrong place from the onset. I wouldn't say this has been as short sighted as oh say, having to drastically reduce priest regen time after time, starting from when people were running Nax.
Rhabella Oct 29th 2009 3:09PM
@Zappo
It was reset though. GC himself said the ratings (dodge, parry, crit) were set exceptionally high to help avoid this very problem in the top tier of Wrath content. He also said the hard modes and subsequent rewards of higher iLvl gear threw the original Wrath gear scale out of whack, and they were working on this not being a problem in Cataclysm.
I do respect the issue and understand it, but, seriously, how many times is Blizz gonna say, “our bad, sorry bout the nerf, we promise to fix it next time.”
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me