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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 8 of 8)
joshbuddha Oct 30th 2009 1:26AM
Claiming this affects all tanks equally is about as ignorant a comment as can be made, warriors and paladins are hurt much less by this than druids and DKs. Druids are losing their only mitigation form, DKs are losing 1 of their 2 and a huge portion of their threat, when DK threat is already spiky and low as is. Warriors and Paladins still have a huge chunk of block and parry, and revenge really isn't the biggest part of warrior threat since the devestate buff and 2.0 speed of the quel serrar making them hit harder and still being fast enough for heroic strikes as well. DKs are low man on the tank totem pole right now and are going to fall off more in ICC, druids will still have the most HP and armor but the damage incoming is going to be much more significant its going back to the mana sponge idea for druids like they were in Naxx. If this was set up so 10% dodge and 10% block or 10% dodge, 5% parry, 5% block so it was more evenly spaced around the mitigation types it would hit all equally, right now it does not hit the other tanks the same it hits druids.
Also when talking about the previous dodge nerf / parry rating buff, that wasn't really the part that hit druids the hardest it was the nerf of agility to dodge ratio as well, since no other tank class stacks agility.
joshbuddha Oct 30th 2009 3:22AM
Yes combined dodge with parry druids have less avoidance than other tanks, most druids hit at most 50% dodge right now, I am in full 245 or better gear and am at 46% and I am using the heroic fervor of the Frostborn instead of 2 stam trinkets, our prot warrior has 29% dodge and 23% parry, so he has more overall avoidance just parry has more DR, right now though shield tanks are taking over all less damage, so splitting this hit so it hurt block would be much more balanced since paladins and warrior tanks are the tanks with the greatest avoidance, mainly because with on top of block they also get so much bonus avoidance from defense.
Also if this purely hits dodge and dodge alone other tanks can gem / enchant / gear around it, looking for more parry / block gear, the only option druids have is to stack more stam and be more of a mana sponge.
Nawaf Oct 30th 2009 3:41AM
Will this be applied to all of ICC, or just ICC: the frozen throne (the raid)? Will it affect the dungeons?
ttlanhil Oct 30th 2009 7:19AM
Sweet. A buff to bear tanking at last.
Now, before you get too excited, I'll explain why.
Part of it has already been explained.
As long as no tank has less than 20% dodge going in, it theoretically drops everyone's avoidance chance the same amount (although, sure, going from 60%-40% isn't the same as 50%-30% in terms of change to damage taken. On the other hand, bears already expect to be hit more, but have more health/armour to soak it up).
However... Take into account diminishing returns.
All I've read from the theorycrafters says bears over 50% dodge get better value from +def than more dodge, due to diminishing returns on dodging...
What will this change mean? We probably won't hit that 50% mark again in ICC, which means we can continue gearing up the way we did, not worrying about the high-end tax on dodge values.
It's simpler, and has some extra value for us.
To me, it seems like less diminishing returns means we end up losing less avoidance. Assuming I understand the mechanics correctly (if diminishing returns applies before the -20% dodge then it goes back to affecting all tanks roughly the same as far as avoidance, but my other points still hold).
As for the other effects... We don't lose much.
There's 3 rage from a dodge, but against bosses (unless you're well overgeared or it's a heavy magic fight (and then dodge isn't your problem anyway)) you shouldn't get rage starved.
We don't have any abilities that become available or more powerful after we dodge. Other tanks do.
We don't lose opportunities by not dodging, we just take a bit more damage (and the lower damage output of bosses means we're already designed for soaking up the hits better than other tanks may be).
Going on the comments of more dodge above, which we generally get from agility rather than dodge rating (apart from enchants and Equip: lines), we'll probably end up stacking agi a little higher, which means... More crits. More threat, and more savage defence.
Reading about Cataclysm, other tanks are going to be made more like bears (standard-PvE crit immunity through talents, etc), this is probably an early part of it.
And for such a large change, and Blizz's interest in balancing both power and population of classes, I think they'll probably put a fair bit of effort into making it work reasonably well. There'll be hiccoughs, but of all the downsides to bear tanking... This change doesn't worry me too much.
TL;DR: less diminishing returns on dodge, no missed Revenge/etc opportunities, we're already designed to soak up hits. They buffed our furry butts.
(sorry if this double posts, first comment and no email to confirm as yet, using diff account)
Firehorn Oct 30th 2009 10:27AM
Well there goes my plans of shaman tanking the raid...
If this is included in the 5 man I'll be greatly upset.
Abad Oct 30th 2009 2:11PM
Those stupid illegal paladins and dks always coming to azeroth and stealing our jobs o.o
ikir Oct 31st 2009 8:47AM
This sucks imho. I don't like the idea. I would love to fight a lot of trash which hit less hard than have my dodge killed for no reason. Bad idea for Sunwell plateu, bad idea for icecrown. They have many way to do fights challenging with spell, aureas, adds without doing this and keeping low healing spikes.
Jhaerik Dec 22nd 2009 6:08PM
Why did they not just scale the ICC bosses to be level 84/85's? This would fix the overpowered gear system all the way around... and actually give some value to all the extra people of +hit laying around, while lowering tank avoidance.