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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsChill 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 5 of 8)
Reps Oct 29th 2009 2:53PM
Guys, guys...
PTR.
Public T-E-S-T Realm.
If druids are too badly hit by this nerf-buff, blizz will (hopefully) compensate with some other from of buff.
Valt Oct 29th 2009 2:53PM
Oh well now tanks really have to switch to stacking stamina..oh wait
msh005 Oct 29th 2009 2:55PM
Why does everyone keep crying about it being the a massive hit to DK's? For bears I understand but in all honestly my guild uses a bear as an OT/dps and he has something like 50% dodge so at ICC level gear its not going to hurt him that much.
But you all keep saying that warriors and paladins will be ungodly now because fo block? I will trade DK's my ability to wear a shield for one of your cooldowns anyday. I mean fuck I block for 2k damage and I'm breaking the game and theres no reason to have another tanking class? Really people stop crying about a nerf that hits all of us(tanks) and trying make it sound incedibly horrible for you.
Chris Anthony Oct 29th 2009 4:13PM
Death Knights are complaining because one of their primary threat-generation abilities, Rune Strike, only becomes active after the DK has dodged or parried. 20% less Dodge is a significant decrease in the number of times that Rune Strike will activate, which in turn is a significant decrease in the amount of threat that a Death Knight can generate.
Avan Oct 29th 2009 2:54PM
I stand by my assertion that it would be easier to just implement a hard cap for avoidances.
zappo Oct 29th 2009 3:11PM
They already have them. They're rather high. This also leads us down the road of taking regular increased damage. Therefore we need to boost healer mana regen, but NOT boost the regen of dps. I don't think a cap is the answer so much as blizzard hands out too much of a stat on items, then can't figure out what to do after they've given out too much.
Jeff Oct 29th 2009 2:59PM
I think that a better alternative instead of just dropping evasions by a percentage is to have the debuff only allow a maximum of that stat. In other words, instead of decreasing by 20%, how about the highest that stat could be is 20% or some other arbitrary value?
rawr Oct 29th 2009 2:59PM
If they are lowering the damage cap i wonder if shield block rating will become useful again.
As it stands this dont really seem like a big deal but i can see a lot of ignorant bears freaking out as though this affects them more somehow.
Reps Oct 29th 2009 2:59PM
And shut up about stacking parry. If you currently have 30% dodge, and 15% parry, you have 45% avoidance. With this nerf, you will have 25% avoidance.
Now say you acquired gear with 5% more dodge (5% more avoidance), and brought it up to 35% while your other stats stayed the same. You now have 30% avoidance after the nerf.
On the other hand, say you decided to stack parry. You dropped 15% of your dodge, but brought your parry up 20% (again, 5% more avoidance). You now have 15% dodge, and 35% parry. After the nerf, you will have 30% avoidance.
Last I checked 30% was still the same as 30%.
Malkavos Oct 29th 2009 3:08PM
Actually, in the scenario you described, the person with 35% parry and 15% dodge would have 35% avoidance after the nerf, as your dodge can't drop below 0%.
Of course, it's not a real world situation to begin with, since you will never be able to push parry up that high, and lowering dodge will only increase the diminishing returns on your other avoidance stats.
In addition, I'd like to see the armory for an Icecrown-ready tank who does not already have at least 20% dodge.
busuan Oct 29th 2009 3:03PM
Instead of some lame stat nerf, I propose a level-nerfing debuff from da Lich King, 'I-am-better-than-you-are!', inside Icecrown Citadel, everyone goes back to level 76. Yep, basically you find yourself nekkid and bare-handed once you zone in, with da Lich King emoting: cover yourself little girl, cover yourself!
Malkavos Oct 29th 2009 3:03PM
People are moaning that this will affect DK's and druids more, but it won't. This is a flat 20% avoidance nerf, taken from the highest avoidance stat for all tanks (and the only one shared by all tanking classes). Block is not a pure avoidance stat, it's more like a hybrid of avoidance and mitigation, and it's not a direct substitute for the dodge you're losing.
Unless a warrior or pally can switch their stats around so much that they have less than 20% base dodge, they will still be losing the exact same amount of avoidance as everyone else. Switching stats around to remove all possible dodge rating would only serve to lower total avoidance, as your block and parry would then be pushed even further into diminishing returns.
If incoming hits are going to be smaller and more steady, it really sounds like it won't be a net change to anything besides the current burstiness of damage, just as blizzard has stated.
Tom Oct 29th 2009 3:21PM
Let's say you have a Bear with 50% Dodge, a DK with 35%, and a Warrior with 30%. Subtract 20% from each of those. What happens?
THEY ALL LOSE THE SAME AMOUNT OF AVOIDANCE.
Regarding Blocking, all this QQing about it doesn't come close to the QQing from Paladins and Warriors throughout 3.1 and 3.2 about how it's USELESS. There's *one* fight, on hard mode mind you, where Block makes a difference for anybody, and even then it's for the off-tanks. Maybe it will be useful in ICC, but that's what we wondered going into Ulduar and the Coliseum as well.
Morighan Oct 29th 2009 10:56PM
It won't cause any more issues *avoidance* wise to DKs/Bears etc, but it will cause threat issues for DKs, since we'll be having around 40% less Rune Strikes than we currently do.
How big this difference will be remains to be seen.
Nerfing DK avoidance nerfs DK threat the same way that nerfing Druid crit would reduce Druid mitigation :)
Josin Oct 29th 2009 3:19PM
Fair enough. The use will still be far more effective now, since you won't be dodging as often.
John Oct 29th 2009 3:21PM
Wait - this post is not about the feel of a toilet seat on a cold winter morning ?
Darn.
Malkavos Oct 29th 2009 3:27PM
Brrrr. I see what you did there.
Captn Obvious Oct 29th 2009 3:31PM
Congrats - you made me wee a little.
RiverDragon Oct 30th 2009 2:26AM
The comment you have made here makes only so much sense... You probably wish you could get your hands on what we have here in Japan... Electric toilet seats! (coils hidden in the seat itself of course)
Mognet T Oct 29th 2009 3:30PM
Somewhere in the world, the first Rogue to tank Illadain just realized it's become even more impossible for a repeat.