The Light and How to Swing It: Everything tankadins need to know about patch 4.2
by Matt Walsh 
Jun 17th 2011 at 9:00AM
Patch 4.2 is upon us. The Firelands is opening, and Mount Hyjal is once again threatened with being consumed by flames. Pretty soon we'll be knocking down the doors to the Sulfuron Keep and overthrowing the Lord of Flames himself. But first we need to find our footing in the face of the many changes being tossed at us.
Some are particularly tame, like the new icons for three of our abilities, others are much more consequential, like the redesign of Holy Shield. The key to being able to tank right out of the gate is having a good bearing of what these changes are and what they mean to you. In today's post, I'll provide you with just that.
Holy Shield has been redesigned
No more will Holy Shield immediately activate when Holy Power is expended, providing a boost of 10% block value. Instead, Holy Shield now an active, off-global cooldown ability that provides 20% block value for 10 seconds, with a 30 second cooldown.
In a previous column I explored at length why I think the change is a buff to us, and I stand by that. Reasonable people can disagree with that assessment -- hopefully reasonably -- but, nonetheless, I recommend approaching the ability like another cooldown. I'm sure many will have the instinct to just macro the new Holy Shield to Crusader Strike and be happy with an aggregate percent of total damage reduction, but I strongly suggest that's the wrong way to go about it.
Instead, as I said, treat it like a cooldown. Use it as much as you can, but use it intelligently. Watch your boss mod timers for an imminent damage spike and pop Holy Shield to mitigate it. Even if you're expecting a spike in magic damage, using Holy Shield will take the edge of the following physical attack, which can make healing you back up that much easier.
Bottom line: This is a nerf to total damage reduction, sure, that's a gimme. However, TDR is not as big of a factor in your survival as proper cooldown usage is in mitigating spikes. Spikes kill tanks and spikes devour healer mana. TDR can be covered by overheals to the point where you might not even notice it ebb.
No more dodge from agility
In probably the saddest change for us this patch, Blizzard has officially finished off agility's usefulness as a tanking stat. With patch 4.0 at the start of Cataclysm, agility no longer provided us with armor. Now, it no longer provides us with dodge chance, either.
There are several repercussions to this. For starters, we will no longer be able to use agility accessories to boost our combat table coverage. Pieces like the Necklace of Strife were considered exceptionally powerful pieces because they often paired gobs of mastery with a nice chunk of agility, which had a much more favorable conversion rate to avoidance than strength.
Make sure you have strength pieces banked to cover the hole left in your kit by any agility pieces you won't be able to use anymore. Also, when balancing your dodge and parry while reforging, you want to keep your dodge about 200 rating higher than your parry rating to account for any parry rating you'll gain from raid buffs.
Base dodge is increased
Overall, however, we will end up with more dodge. The above change is being paired with a boost of base dodge chance to 5%. Prior to this, our base dodge chance was 3.652%. As long as you didn't get 1.348% dodge from various agility pieces (around 500 agility with likely diminishing returns), you're looking at a buff to your avoidance levels.
Along with even more parry from strength!
On top of that dodge chance buff, you're looking at a minor buff to your parry as well. The conversion of strength to parry rating is being boosted from 25% to 27%, which in turn converts to parry chance. The additional parry chance gained per point of strength will be small, but any additional avoidance is always welcome.
Mastery is not being nerfed
As for stats that are not being changed, thankfully, mastery will remain (for now) as it currently is. It will remain our best stat for damage reduction. Even more so with the new Holy Shield, which is all the more effective at block cap. Let's count our lucky stars that, for now, Blizzard didn't have the time this patch cycle to monkey with our precious block chance.
We'll need new leg armor
Charscale Leg Armor offers up stamina and agility, the latter of which is (as you read above) useless to us following 4.2. Thankfully, we're getting a new leg armor option in 4.2, the Drakehide Leg Armor. Make sure to have the mats for one of these handy on patch day: one Pristine Hide and 20 Volatile Earth. Prices for the mats will surely skyrocket if you wait until Tuesday to buy them.
Ardent Defender has a new spell effect
A small change, but a nice one. When you pop Ardent Defender, you'll see the following spell effect:
This might preclude the need to have a Power Aura set up to answer that question of "I hit the button, but is Ardent Defender still up?"
Hammer of the Righteous costs less mana
The cost of Hammer of the Righteous has been dropped from 12% to 10%. A very minor change, of course, but this will make AOEing a little less mana-intensive.
Judgements of the Wise procs differently
This is a very nice change for those of us that like to ride the knife's edge of trading threat for survivability, and as a result reforge away all our hit for better stats. Now, rather than a miss costing you precious mana regen, the mere act of casting your Judgement procs Judgements of the Wise and will begin to refill our blue rage bar.
Seal of Righteousness was buffed, but not for us
With 4.2, Seal of Righteousness now procs on any melee attack, not just single-target melee attacks. I only mention this to help dispel any confusion over whether this is ideal for tanking now. The answer is no -- this is a buff intended purely for ret paladins, and we should continue to use Seal of Truth as our primarily offensive seal.
And, don't forget the most important change of all -- Rebuke, Divine Protection, and Divine Shield have new icons. Holy fists for everyone!
The Light and How to Swing It tries to help paladins cope with the dark times brought by Cataclysm. Check out our protection 101 guide and our suggestions for protection paladin addons.
Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Goradan Jun 17th 2011 9:12AM
Holy fist!
Chris Jun 17th 2011 12:02PM
Holy Fist FTW !!!!
Hal Jun 17th 2011 9:23AM
What about for large AoE pulls? Will Seal of Righteousness proc from Hammer of the Righteous damage? If so, will that be better, or just a redundancy?
Also, love the new spell effect for Ardent Defender, very nice.
Finally, I haven't seen much about gear that will be available from the new Hyjal dailies. Will there be anything we should start slavering over? (Well, those of us not kitted out in heroic T11 gear.)
Matt Walsh Jun 17th 2011 9:35AM
It won't even be better for HotR. The change to Seal of Righteousness was made in tandem to a Ret change that allows SoR to chain out for them. Without us also having that talent, it is very much not worth it.
A lot of the new faction pieces are pretty milquetoast. No mastery to speak of, last time I checked.
Hal Jun 17th 2011 10:02AM
Re: Faction gear
Super. Looks like I'll be grinding heroics again to fill in gaps for raiding, then.
Nina Katarina Jun 17th 2011 10:41AM
The nice faction gear comes from the raid-boss-kills faction, so if you're clearing Firelands each week you can probably skimp on the daily grind.
lucaselgato Jun 17th 2011 9:30AM
Matt,
I am curious as to WHY it's important to keep dodge and parry close to one another in point value. I understand about diminishing returns (DR) in PvP, but haven't really found a very good, detailed description about DR in PvE. Can you explain this some more, and maybe help "prove" that Mastery (a 30/40% damage reduction) is better than dodge/parry (both 100% damage reductions).
Also, is parry better than dodge simply due to parry-haste (where I get a faster weapon swing after I parry).
Suo Jun 17th 2011 9:43AM
The amount of avoidance you get from both parry and dodge diminish according to a preset curve, so the marginal value of a single point in either decreases. The numbers work out such that at around 10% parry/dodge, an additional point of mastery (not subject to diminishing returns) provides more damage reduction than an additional point of parry/dodge.
Parry is not better than dodge (at least not for Paladins), but you have a higher base dodge chance and you get more from raid buffs in 4.1, so if you're really looking to maximize mitigation you should have around 1% more parry than dodge. This may no longer be true with the buff to strength parry and the removal of agility dodge in 4.2.
Math here: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=635166#p635166
Matt Walsh Jun 17th 2011 9:47AM
The reason you want to keep dodge and parry close to each other is that they both suffer the same exact diminishing returns. So if you have 15% dodge and 11% parry, for example, you're going to have 12.66% dodge after DR and 9.78% parry after DR, a total loss of 3.56% avoidance. However, say you had 13% dodge and 13% parry; you're going to be left with 11.26% of each stat after DR, a loss of 3.48% avoidance. That's a pickup of .08% avoidance, which isn't a ton, but it's free avoidance you're just leaving on the table otherwise.
Mastery, even at 30%/40%, is a better value for damage reduction because 179.284 mastery rating is equal to 2.25% block chance, while 176.7189 dodge or parry rating is equal to only 1% dodge or parry change (before DR). So, per rating point, you get more combat table coverage from mastery than pure avoidance. The name of the game is more getting to the block cap stage as efficiently as possible. Also paired with the fact that avoidance suffers heavy, heavy DR, while mastery does not.
Parry haste doesn't really factor into the equation, since Vengeance makes threat a non-issue. Both dodge and parry are perfectly equivalent and you should strive to keep them level.
Matt Walsh Jun 17th 2011 9:49AM
@Suo: My understanding if you'll want 200 more dodge rating than parry after 4.2, to account for parry gains from strength raid buffs.
Vitos Jun 17th 2011 9:56AM
There are two different types of diminishing returns. In PvP it means that CC lasts for a short amount of time if its applied repeatedly.
In PvE it means the stat becomes less valuable, either something inherent in the rating->% conversion, or because of the way the stat works (like crit, but we can ignore that).
Regarding Parry and Dodge you get a smaller % when you have a higher rating. Using some random numbers that are probably not at all accurate: Lets say you have 1000 dodge rating. At this point every 100 points gives you 1 dodge % chance. When you get up to 1500 dodge rating every 150 points gives you 1 dodge % chance, or 100 points gets you .666 dodge % chance. Parry scales in the same way. So that means if you have 1500 dodge rating and 1000 parry rating, one point of parry rating is 50% more valuable as a mitigation stat than one point of dodge. (I hope that clears things up a little bit).
Regarding your second question, it is because of scaling. Mastery will always give 2.25% block chance per point and Mastery does not have diminishing returns. Using the above numbers, at 1000 Mastery rating, 100 mastery rating will grant 1 mastery. At 1500 mastery rating, 100 mastery will STILL grant 1 mastery. So at larger values mastery becomes increasingly more valuable than dodge/parry. Additionally, to get a more accurate mitigation value for mastery, multiply the .4 (40%) by 2.25 per point of Mastery which gets you .9 mitigation from Mastery. So until the amount of rating that grants 1 point of mastery grants more than .9 dodge/parry those are better, but that happens almost passively (if I'm correct).
I hope that makes sense.
~Vitos
Izzy Jun 17th 2011 10:13AM
The easiest way to think of DR, is let's say Dodge is a rich fudge, and parry is ice cream. You eat too much dodge(fudge), and it's less effective how happy it makes you - you eat too much ice cream (parry), you get a brain freeze. Ok that's not a great analogy, whatever.
Simply, both stats are on DR, meaning the more you get, the more it takes of them to provide the same results. Simulated numbers for ease:
When you have 200 Dodge Rating, let's say you get 2% dodge - so you'd think ok 100 Dodge Rating = 1%; well this isn't true because of DR, it'll actually take something like 315 to get your next 1%. As you get more dodge, it's going to take more rating to actually increase your dodge chance. The same is true of parry. So to get the most out of your stats, you want them to be as close as possible (save for the ~200 or so parry you'll get from raid buffs); in order for them to be the most effective. The reason being is that, when you have 1600 parry rating for 14% parry, and 800 dodge rating for 7% dodge; you'd get a lot more avoidance out of getting 100 more dodge rating than you would parry. For 200 parry you'd get say .2% parry and for 200 dodge rating you'd get say .6% dodge.
Does that make sense? I'm not sure it does, but that's the easiest way I can explain it without going into nasty maths. There's a few great blog posts on it out there.
As far as Mastery vs dodge/parry, you're talking about two different animals. One is mitigation the other is avoidance. Mitigation is essentially decreasing all damage taken, it's mitigating the amount of damage you're talking regardless, while avoidance is a chance to not take damage (physical vs spell issues aside). Neither of them are technically 'better' than the other since they're different elements. Sure having 90% dodge+parry would be nice (albeit boring), if you had 0% mitigation, you'd get 1-shot 10% of the time. In contrast if you had 90% mitigation and 0% dodge/parry, you'd take rather consistent damage, and likely be unkillable - but healers would have to constantly heal you. The two work in conjunction, but differently. Ultimately in a real world scenario you need both, and it's mathy debate as to which is best in which scenarios (and it technically changes between fights and mechanics). Think of your tank as... well a car, where your suspension (mitigation) evens out the bumps in the road, and your steering (dodge/parry) gives you a chance to avoid those bumps. Both are important for different reasons. Again not the best analogy but I haven't had coffee yet.
P.S. I'm pretty sure parry-haste has been removed completely at this point (pretty much); but maybe paladins have a talent or something. Even so, an additional melee swing doesn't help your overall survivability only threat; and if a paladin is having threat issues, they're doing it wrong.
Izzy Jun 17th 2011 10:16AM
Eh I forgot about mastery not really having DR. I'm not a paladin so whatever. The reasons above are why mastery is better. But it remains that avoidance and mitigation are two different animals.
EtaoinShrdlu Jun 17th 2011 12:26PM
Diminishing returns made simple: suppose 200 points of dodge rating and 200 points of parry rating gave you 3% dodge + parry (maybe 1.5% dodge and 1.5% parry). If you had 300 points of dodge rating and 100 points of parry rating, it might only be 2.5% dodge + parry (maybe 1.75% dodge and .75% parry). Each point of a specific rating decreases the effectiveness of every point after it. Note that mastery is not a rating, and does not have diminishing returns. The numbers are made up, but that's the concept.
theckhd Jun 17th 2011 2:30PM
Regarding parry-haste: the mechanic is still in the game, in that players gain its benefits when they parry a boss or another player. However, it's automatically turned off on all bosses. So defensively, it's no longer a concern for us in PvE.
Noob Jun 17th 2011 9:41AM
Will these changes affect glyph choice after the patch?
Matt Walsh Jun 17th 2011 9:48AM
Not at all.
Nagheen Jun 17th 2011 10:53AM
I am actually pretty happy that they finally removed the dodge from agility. It was nice to get more effect from BoK of battle shout, but it just felt weird to me that an agi neck or trinket was better than dedicated tank stuff. Especially when it comes with near useless threat stat like crit or haste.
And I think the buff to base dodge en parry gained from strength will make it barely noticeable bare for a few regems/reforging.
Also Ardent Defender looks pretty nice, kinda a shiny version of Vigilance.
Guy Jun 17th 2011 11:01AM
Of course this happens right after I get Unsolvable Riddle Trinket from TB Rep I at least still get the Mastery from it, but can't pop it for the dodge.
Lasse Havelund Jun 19th 2011 3:57AM
Get yourself the Mirror of Broken Images; the resistance is fantastic for many fights in the current tier (Nefarian, Chimaeron, Magmaw, Omnotron, Valiona & Theralion, Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Cho'gall...) and I suspect we'll be seeing a fair amount of fire damage in Firelands as well.