World of Warcraft™

I took a couple minutes searching through the forums looking for an answer to this question, but since the date stamps on the posts were nowhere near now... I'm posting this one.

Maybe I'm labouring under a delusion here, but for some reason it's gotten stuck in my head that Dodge and Parry need to be within 1% of each other. Is that wrong? Assuming you can view my armoury, you should be able to see all my stats. Otherwise: Dodge 15.59%, Parry 15.80%, Mastery 27.43, Expertise 26, Melee Hit 2.17%, and Spell Hit 11.55%.

I'm looking at picking up some new valour pieces, but they're going to destroy my Dodge / Parry balance. So I thought I'd look around and see what other's thoughts on the subject were.

Thanks.

Dear god, why are you using Mending?

No sir.

To minimize the effect of diminishing returns you should attempt to keep your raid buffed dodge and parry RATINGS close to one another.

It's more important for block tanks. For DKs, percentages are always going to be a little wonky because you should be using the Rune of Swordshattering, unless you're pushing content and need more health, in which case you should be using the Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle.

Getting the ratings to match up is more important, and even that doesn't really matter for a DK.

You also don't need any expertise.

Keeping dodge/parry balanced is very, very minor in the grand scheme of things. Balancing them is something that is literally last on our list of priorities. We only do it once we've taken care of everything else, and, even then, it's merely to edge out that extra 0.02% avoidance. 0.02% avoidance isn't noticable, but since it's statistically better, we attempt to balance them. It's not the end of the world if we make that balance slightly worse, and an upgrade with the "wrong" avoidance stat is still an upgrade, even if it would be better if the "right" avoidance stat was on there.

You should be getting the socket bonuses in your helm/chest by the way. Those are beautiful bonuses. You should always be using a DK-specific weapon enchant, too. The two tank ones are Swordshattering and Stoneskin Gargoyle, and most use Swordshattering.

Note: compare ratings, not the percentages of avoidance.

Also, DK runeforges beat enchants every day.

Yeah, um, don't use Mending. Use the 4% parry rune. Seriously. Why do you have Mending on that?


Also, my sticky's not out of date :(
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Attack tables, CTC, diminishing returns and you!
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489160859

It's out of date like mine is. Not updated because there is no relevant changes. ;p

Thanks for the responses.

@Nerfheals - Using Mending because, as I mentioned, the assumption was to keep Dodge and Parry within 1% of each other. The rune added 4% Parry, there was no reforging on earth that could cover that. So I went with Mending to keep the 2 stats balanced.

@Waniou - Thanks, I checked your post that you linked Waniou. my Dodge Rating is 2133 and my Parry Rating is 2183. There were 2 macros on your post, that I used that stated having Dodge 121.09 Higher than Parry. (The second actually said have Parry -121.09 higher than Dodge which made me laugh). Just to make sure, My Parry is still too high for my Dodge rating?

Math makes my head hurt. :D

02/14/2012 02:57 PMPosted by Pandoraa

Using Mending because, as I mentioned, the assumption was to keep Dodge and Parry within 1% of each other.

Incorrect assumption, there. Balancing them is ideal, but utterly minuscule in terms of gain. More avoidance is always better.

Thanks for the responses.

@Nerfheals - Using Mending because, as I mentioned, the assumption was to keep Dodge and Parry within 1% of each other. The rune added 4% Parry, there was no reforging on earth that could cover that. So I went with Mending to keep the 2 stats balanced.

not that your reasoning makes any sense .. but still:

- rune of stoneskin gargoyle: 4% armor and 2% stamina
- swordshatter: 4% parry (that is added AFTER the ratings).


if you have 2000 dodge rating and 2000 parry rating, swordshatter will add 4% after that.

For example, my stats:
Dodge 15.69%
Parry 20.13%

in reality, what you are looking at in terms of rating is:
Dodge 15.69%
Parry 16.13%

That's close enough .. any gain from micro-managing reforge to even out both perfectly will be irrelevant.

It's also very hard to keep parry rating from being higher than dodge, simply because of the str = parry rating conversion that we have. And tank gear have a LOT of str on it. 100str = 0.1% parry (give or take a few) .. so yeh .. parry rating will naturally be a little ahead.



Point is:
- if you are using Swordshatter, your parry will be 4-5% higher than your dodge.
- if you are using SSGargoyle, your parry will be ~1% higher than your dodge.

Its working as intended ..

now plz, get rid of the Mending enchant .. you are making us look bad =/

DR is only calculated off rating, which is why you balance off rating and not percentage. Besides that, even if you were only looking at self healing, Fallen Crusader would be more... :/

What other people said. Swordshattering is independent of Diminishing Returns, so it's just a free 4% parry. This is why people are telling you to balance your dodge and parry ratings, not percents. The ratings are the only important thing.

And yeah, if the macro says to put it -121 more parry than dodge, the negative just means go the other way. :P
-----
Attack tables, CTC, diminishing returns and you!
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489160859

Logged off in dps spec, but I'm MS tank. How you gear/reforge will largely depend on your personal skill level at playing the class, your healers' skill level, and the level of content you are working on.

A few things (truths):

The reasons people try to keep their dodge/parry rating about the same is to avoid diminishing returns. However, the DR is not a big deal, and if you are stacking mastery (as it looks like you are from your post) just reforge into mastery at every opportunity on your gear and don't even worry about your dodge/parry rating.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what enchant you use on your weapon. How well you play is going to overshadow this by miles. A weapon enchant is just a nice bonus.

Swordshattering is the best overall mitigation, but you shouldn't be having any problems with physical damage this tier if you play right anyways. If you aren't having trouble with dying while tanking, I'd recommend switching to Fallen Crusader for the self healing and increased damage (healing proc will be 2-5% of your total absorbs/healing in a raid). SSG is generally not worth using, but like I said, what enchant you use doesn't ultimately matter much.

If you are having any survivability problems at all, focus on using your CDs better (all of them), abusing runic empowerment more to get more Death Strikes, and timing your DS hits to line up with the rhythm of damage for the fight.

If you raid, try and learn to watch boss timers to know when certain attacks are coming.

Gearing for hit and expertise are totally optional. I used to reforge out of both (would usually have like 12 exp and 1% hit). You shouldn't have any problems with aggro except for possibly the first 10s of a fight (just double taunt). However, after realizing I had zero survivability problems even when tanking the harder hitting heroic bosses, I've since reforged to both the hit and exp caps just to do more damage. There are a lot of people that would flame me for doing that, but if your gear doesn't suck (yours doesn't) and you play right, you won't be squishy no matter how you reforge.

In addition to hitting the hit and exp soft caps, I've also started stacking stamina this tier as my primary stat and it works just dandy. This is another suggestion that some people on the forums will flame about, but I can tell you from personal experience Stam is a very strong stat for DKs this tier. I'd recommend you stack both it and mastery as much as you can and ignore what your dodge+parry percents are.

For ideal dodge/parry balance

unbuffed Dodge- unbuffed parry=[(Unbuffed str+549)*1.05-Unbuffed str]*0.27

The other thing that people, such as you OP, really really need to keep in mind, is that balancing dodge and parry is a very very, min-max-y, do-this-last sort of thing. Maximising your mastery, then your avoidance, takes priority. It is not a priority, and if you can choose between more mastery and balancing your dodge/parry, you choose the more mastery. If you can choose between 25% parry and 10% dodge, or 15% parry and 15% dodge, you choose the 25% parry and the 10% dodge because it's better than 30% avoidance.
-----
Attack tables, CTC, diminishing returns and you!
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2489160859

for my DK tank, i resolved a 1000 dodge/parry imbalance (2400 dodge, 3400 parry with the 88/stack dodge trink from spine). want to know how much that resolution gained me in terms of total net avoidance? .08%. that's right. 1000 stat points, gained less than a tenth of a % in total avoidance.

i reforged right back and decided that it wasn't worth the headache for a trinket that i'll use on one, maybe two fights this whole tier. i still am on the fence is i should use it on spine with all the blobs, or if i should just put on my mastery trinkets and call it a day.

for my DK tank, i resolved a 1000 dodge/parry imbalance (2400 dodge, 3400 parry with the 88/stack dodge trink from spine). want to know how much that resolution gained me in terms of total net avoidance? .08%. that's right. 1000 stat points, gained less than a tenth of a % in total avoidance.

i reforged right back and decided that it wasn't worth the headache for a trinket that i'll use on one, maybe two fights this whole tier. i still am on the fence is i should use it on spine with all the blobs, or if i should just put on my mastery trinkets and call it a day.

DKs are the worst tank for the Bloods on spine (by worst I do not mean non-viable, just worst). If you have another non-DK tank, then have them tank the bloods so you can take the Amalgamation.

You're right that avoidance is slightly better if you HAVE to tank the bloods, but it's really not worth reforging for just that fight unless your team is really struggling and needs every advantage it can get.

for my DK tank, i resolved a 1000 dodge/parry imbalance (2400 dodge, 3400 parry with the 88/stack dodge trink from spine). want to know how much that resolution gained me in terms of total net avoidance? .08%. that's right. 1000 stat points, gained less than a tenth of a % in total avoidance.

i reforged right back and decided that it wasn't worth the headache for a trinket that i'll use on one, maybe two fights this whole tier. i still am on the fence is i should use it on spine with all the blobs, or if i should just put on my mastery trinkets and call it a day.

DKs are the worst tank for the Bloods on spine (by worst I do not mean non-viable, just worst). If you have another non-DK tank, then have them tank the bloods so you can take the Amalgamation.

You're right that avoidance is slightly better if you HAVE to tank the bloods, but it's really not worth reforging for just that fight unless your team is really struggling and needs every advantage it can get.

Um, I tank the Bloods on spine in my frost set (and spec)... very easy to handle..

Unless you are talking about heroic.. Whole other story there.