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Welcome to part three of my tanking stats overview for Tanking 101. So far we have covered maxing out our defense and talked a bit about avoidance. So we know how to make critical hits impossible, and we know how to avoid hits altogether. Today let’s talk about how to reduce the damage that actually gets through. There are two basic ways to do this. We can block the attack, or we can reduce the damage with our armor.

Blocking of course is only for the Warrior and Paladin tanks out there, but it is an important and somewhat confusing topic, so here we go!

Block Rating: This stat increases the chance that you will block an incoming attack with your shield. You still take damage, but your shield will stop a good part of that damage. This can almost be classified as an avoidance stat, because you stack it much in the same way that you stack dodge and parry, in fact it all fits into the same equation to figure out your overall avoidance. You will find that this is the easiest to stack in terms of avoidance per point, but it also is the least effective due to the fact you are still taking damage. When it comes to avoidance dodge is still king, but BR is a great stat to stack, particularly if you are a Paladin going for the block cap (102.4 total avoidance)

Block Value: The difference between block rating and block value is a major stumbling block for many up and coming tanks. It is important to note that THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Where block rating determines your chance to block an attack, block value determines how much of the total damage is blocked. Block value basically says how much damage is going to be shaved off the incoming attack when you block it. So in review, Rating = how often, Value = how much.

Armor: Armor can take a giant chunk of the damage we take in. In many cases it can be reduced by 60-70% if you have a lot of armor. Unfortunately there is really very little we can do to affect this. Armor comes with our gear's item level. So as you upgrade your armor will go up, it is not something to pay particular attention to. In my experience special items with extra armor are rarely worth it. Now I must apologize to the bears out there. I know that armor is a whole different game for you guys, I just can’t say I really know the ins and outs.

What is The Real World Raid Application? This one is pretty simple. Ever wonder why mobs can beat on you all day, yet if one gets loose they will once shot a clothie? They hit them a lot harder than they hit you because you have tons of armor to push take a bite out of the damage. After armor takes off its chuck, then you can block and take off even more. It is easy to see how this can really help, especially against multiple mobs. While many people tend to frown on mitigation as compared to avoidance, I remain a big fan. In many situations the difference between life and death can be a few thousand hit points. When that is the case, you are glad you pushed damage off the table to keep you alive.

So there you go! Now we have covered defense, avoidance, and mitigation. We are far from done however, as there are lots of more stats that play into being an effective tank. We will talk about some of those next time!

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Today I would like to continue the tanking discussion we started the other day and dive a little deeper into the world of tanking stats. Last time around I discussed defense, which is the first major stat you need to get capped as an up and coming tank. It actually carries over quite nicely into today’s topic. Once you have 540 defense and are “capped” you can keep stacking it to improve all the stats I am discussing today. In fact some argue “cap” is the wrong word as you continue to see benefit from additional defense. Now, I would like to talk a bit about avoidance. So lets get right into it!

Avoidance –

What is it? Just because mob swings at you doesn’t mean he has to hit you! In fact we generally prefer that he doesn’t. This is where avoidance comes it. When a mob swings at you there are basically 5 options if you are at or above 540 defense. He either a) hits you b) misses you c) you parry the attack d) you dodge the attack or e) you block the attack.

Our goal is to make it so that A is not an option. Miss is a built in game mechanic which we have little control over (defense will help some here), fortunately we have lots of control over block, dodge, and parry. We need to stack these stats so that we avoid as much incoming damage as possible. Block technically falls into the “mitigation” category where it only stops a portion of the incoming damage, so I will cover that next time, for now let’s talk about dodge and parry.

Dodge: This stat increases that chance that you will dodge the attack, avoiding the damage from the swing completely. That’s right, you take no damage if you dodge! This makes it one of the best stats for a tank to stack. This is obviously better than avoiding just a portion, and therefore all things being equal is preferable to block. It is harder to stack than block (less rating per point on your gear), but it’s well worth seeking out the gear to help with this.

Parry: You didn’t think it could get any better than avoiding all damage, but it can. When you increase your chance to parry an attack the tank benefits from the avoided damage. The swing timer on YOUR attack is sped up after a parry which results in more damage from you, and higher threat on your target. This stat is especially useful to warrior and death knight tanks (especially DKs). Bears can’t parry and Pallies see little benefit. It also happens to be the most difficult to stack in terms of points per overall avoidance percentage.

How Much Do You Need? It can obviously be bit of a balancing act getting all these stats straightened out. Overall a tank can become “block capped” at 102.4% avoidance. This means when dodge, parry, block, and miss add up to 102.4% every incoming attack will be affected by one of those stats. This is not easy to do, but remember to take into account class abilities. Paladins for example have a fairly easy time of reaching this because holy shield gives 30% extra block rating, and it is possible to keep it up 100% of the time. If you do reach the block cap then it is time to stop stacking block and replace it with the superior dodge. Ideally just stack as much avoidance as you can, because it rocks. Just strike a balance, some of it is more effective, some is easier to stack.

A few things to keep in mind are that there are diminishing returns on these stats, so taking one of them way above the others may not be your best bet. However when in doubt dodge is almost always your best option for an avoidance statistic. This topic goes pretty deep so feel free to read around for more info, I am just giving you the basics here.

What Is The Real World Raid Application? You can see how this would be very important in a raid. With raid bosses hitting as hard as they do, pushing some of that damage completely off the table is a huge plus to your raid. Looking at fights like Patchwerk, having an off-tank with high avoidance means some of his huge hateful strikes go away completely!

I would argue that avoidance is the most important stat for tanking as it has a profound affect on how much damage is coming it. You can have all the health in the world, but if you are taking lots of damage then you are still hard to heal, and are likely a big drain of mana on your healers.

That is my overview of avoidance, my personal favorite tanking stat. Next time I will go over mitigation, and how to take a chunk out of the damage that gets through!

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