I’m trying to make sense of the Chill of the Throne effect they’re talking about. On the one hand there’s 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.
So if the tank dodges less often, they will be getting hit more. Conversely, the bosses won’t be hitting as hard, so individual hits will be for less damage. Since the boss formula is that he will be hitting an appropriately geared tank for X damage per second, after mitigation, they’ve had to make those bosses do surprising amounts of damage to cover spans of dodging. This dampens and smoothes the DPS curve incoming against the tank, which should make tank healing easier and less subject to the whims of the random number generator.
But then I wonder, how much dodge does the average tank have? Do they all have at least 20% dodge? If they do, then this is probably an equal opportunity hit. Everyone’s avoidance drops by the same amount. If not, then it will hit Druids a little harder than others, since they don’t have parry or block to fall back on. I’ll assume for now that it’s equal. It’s not even a nerf then, since the bosses are being reduced in potency by the same amount. The area under the curve remains the same, it’s just the shape of the curve that is being changed.
There’s other issues here though. First, remember that bit about not wanting tanks to die because of 2 back-to-back hits?
I still expect many tanks will die in two hits until they get geared up a little. But they will, and then the ability to survive two hits in a row won’t be as big an issue.
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I am pretty sure on day one of 3.3 going live this forum will be filled with tanks who died and respond with “I thought bosses weren’t going to hit hard.”
It sounds like when they say healing will be easier, they are comparing it to some of the pathological cases out there. Spikiness aside, your tanks are going to be taking end game raid-level damage. The bosses in Sunwell hit very very hard. So will these. Adjust your tank healing priorities accordingly.
And these parts just confuse me.
The 20% nerf is applied after diminishing returns. That is why I am saying it won’t affect the relative value of dodge and parry. The Icewell Radiance won’t get you closer to diminishing returns by itself.
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It arguably makes stam less important (though it will always be important for tanks). Many players are probably telling you right now that only stamina and armor are important because if you ever fail to avoid two boss hits in a row that you’re going to die. Under that environment, avoidance loses a lot of value.
If bosses hit for less in IC (which they will, since they will hit more often) then the value of avoidance for purposes of survival increases.
Diminishing returns on avoidance? Are there tanks out there with more than 100% avoidance? I’d be surprised if that was the case. So what does it mean to have diminishing return on an avoidance stat? Do these stats not convert to percentages on a linear scale?
And why is Ghostcrawler telling us this will increase the value of avoidance? It sounds like they are saying that they got themselves in over their heads on avoidance and would rather everyone go over to mitigation. So why not go all in on that? Flatten the incoming damage curve to a straight line by removing avoidance entirely. As long as the healer HPS > boss DPS the tank wins.
Anyone able to shed some light on these issues?
Monday, November 9, 2009 at 4:03PM | 
From NBC Chicago. What you aren’t seeing in this picture are the itty-bitty boyshorts he’s wearing. I dare you to follow the link.My thoughts? Bowles looks likes he enjoys his lunches. And probably should invest some of his vast supplies of cash in fixing the buttons on that shirt. I hope he’s not in the kitchen like that.
