[Patch 3.2] Avoidance Nerf

There’s a change on the PTR that I haven’t mentioned yet. I wasn’t sure I understood it, and I certainly didn’t understand what it would mean.

Let’s get to the change:


Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.

Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced
by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.

The Developers noticed that every tank was going for Dodge over Parry. Parry get penalized because it has a positive side effect. When you parry a Boss’ attack, you swing faster next time theoretically making Parry a ‘threat’ and ‘avoidance’ statck. Don’t confuse this with parry-hasting where YOUR attack gets parried and the Boss hits you faster causing an increase in damage taken.

Boss swings, you parries, you attack faster is what we are talking about.

The Developers simply overestimated how much of an extra benefit this was. Tanks didn’t care, they just wanted avoidance and flocked to Dodge.

So now the two are equal, but parry still punished harder by Diminishing Returns.

The theorycrafters at both Tank Spot and Main Tankadin went to work. MathLab simulations were written and spreadsheets were produced. If you are mathmathically inclined you might enjoy reading the threads: MainTankadin, Tankspot

I love that there are people who are without question much smarter than me.

So what is the bottom line of this change? How should it change the way you look at your gear?

The answer will be different for every person, but let me give you a couple of approaches.

First from Theck:

• Take current ratings and subtract out 689 def, 96 dodge, and 64 parry
• Figure out your current ratio of dodge:def:parry
• if one of these is higher than the ideal ratio of 2.4:1.8:1, swap out some of the rating that's above the target ratio for a rating that's below or at the target value.
• Recalculate and lather, rinse, repeat.

So let’s look at ole Honorshammer. Papa got a new pair of shoes last night thanks to some deft rolling and some kindness by our Elemental Shaman who would have surely outrolled me.

Defense: 701 – 689 = 12
Dodge: 519 – 96 = 423
Parry: 314 – 64 = 250

That gives me a ratio of 1.7:.04:1

Basically, this means I need a ton more Defense, and less Parry in order to have the most efficient use of my Avoidance stats.

Another way to distill this down to ‘what does it mean to me’ is to look at the advice from Xenix. He was leading the Tankspot thread and is another of these math geniuses.

1. Stack defense rating until you reach a number that has a minimum of wasted in the defense rating -> defense conversion. (728,787,846,910 and 969 are the best possible ones to hit).
2. Stack dodge/parry rating from there so that the post-DR portions of your Dodge% and Parry% are in a 1.875:1 ratio
3. If your total dodge+parry rating is getting anywhere near your defense rating, try to hit the next good number of defense rating (while adjusting your dodge/parry rating to maintain #2) as the diminishing returns on miss will be such that you will notice a slight difference.
4. If you can't hit the next good number of defense rating, don't worry - keep stacking dodge/parry in the aforementioned ratio and you'll be fine.

So by Xenix’s advice, I haven’t even done Step 1 yet. I need about 27 more Defense Rating to get there. That also lines up with Theck’s advice that I need more Defense.

My Dodge/Parry are actually pretty close with a ratio of 1.7.

I don’t have any parry gems, or enchants so it will be basically impossible to reduce the amount of parry I have. I’m already enchanting for Defense where it’s available on my Shield, and Back. I’m already using Enduring (Def/Stam) gems in my yellow slots.

The bottom line is that my avoidance isn’t ideal or efficient, but I really don’t see any way I could change it at this point.

EDIT: The Math Genuses continued their work and added this important detail.

• At low gear levels ( defense rating + dodge rating + parry rating
• At higher gear levels (defense + dodge + parry > 1150 rating), gear so that your post-DR dodge and parry percentages come out as close to a 1.88:1 ratio as possible. In other words:
  (character_sheet_dodge_% - 11.65) / (character_sheet_parry_% - 10) = 1.88

Hammer is definately at the 'higher gear levels' with a dodge,defense, and parry of around 1500.
His character sheet dodge % is 26.34%. His character sheet parry is 19.95%. That gives him a ratio of about 1.48. So either more Dodge or less Parry would get him closer to the 1.88 ratio. The advantage to this approach is you use your character sheet percentages which will already include contributions from Defense. Most of my Reds are filled with prismatic stamina gems which I will probably have to change to red Dodge/Stam gems in 3.2 and replace three of my blue stam gems with the JC gems.