Qoenonn gives us an early warning of some changes coming to the cooldown abilities of tanks in Cataclysm, with Patch 4.0.3a. It appears that there is currently a balance issue when tanks accumulate Mastery and cause unthinkable block values.
Although initially they only affected Warriors and Paladins, they have already offered details of other changes for the other two tanks as you can see later.
Let's look at the blue:
As the launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm nears, we continue to adjust the different class abilities. Based on the information and our own testing, we are in the process of evaluating and modifying the cooldown times for the tanks; particularly at level 85. Some of these abilities, such as the druid's Wild Defense, and the death knight's own healing, are particularly difficult to model, so further testing will be necessary before there is enough information in which base adjustments.
In the case of paladins and warriors, we have seen that it is possible that the block chance is too high too fast, causing a situation where the warrior's accumulated Mastery and Shield Block ability behave strangely. Since we want to avoid that scenario, we are going to make some changes to how lockability works for these classes:
Paladins - Sacred Shield will be modified to increase the shield block value by 10% (40% total) instead of increasing the block chance by 15%. Since this will make Mastery more valuable, the amount of block provided by Mastery will be reduced to a 2.25% block chance per Mastery point, instead of 3%.
Warriors - At level 85, the value of Shield Block decreases as the value of the block generated by mastery increases. To remedy this, we'll convert excess Block + Evasion that exceeds 100% into Critical Block Chance. Along with that change, shield block will be reduced to + 25% block chance (was 100%), but will still be a noticeable improvement for most warriors. Additionally, in response to this change, the amount of Block and Critical Block provided by Mastery will be matched, now granting 1.5% Block Chance per point.
Shortly after, Zarhym has expanded this information in the American forums. You have the information after the jump.
Here are some additional details based on the questions and feedback we are seeing:
- The warrior's new Mastery is 1.5% Block and 1.5% Critical Block per Mastery Point.
- Shield Block will overflow into critical block if any portion of the 25% would have been wasted if your block + dodge + parry were already high enough. If you always round 100% (which would be very difficult) you would only get Critical Block when Shield Block is active. The intention is to make sure Shield Block is not wasted, not to make sure Mastery comes out of your eyes (or any other hole in your face region)
- Shield Block is not intended to be a magical cooldown (neither is Blood Shield, which is also for physical damage only). We don't want to duplicate the same skill on every tank as long as we can avoid it. As a general rule, bosses don't use magic damage nonstop at short intervals. On the other hand, Shield Block has much more uptime than Barkskin. We still think that Cataclysm's "raid" environment will be less focused on tanks dying from point damage than we now see with level 80 players. Mitigating a lot of damage to save mana from the Healer can be very useful in Cataclysm.
- Wild Defense is really over in the beta and we have acted accordingly. Many of the reports of boss encounters in Beta where bosses took out tanks in two hits were because it was the damage bosses had to do to take on Feral Tanks. With less damage absorbed, the boss's damage can be adjusted downward. The multiplier for the attack power on the absorb effect has been reduced (from 65% to 35%, still modified by mastery) and it is no longer triggered by critical periodic damage.
- Paladiens Tanks are not meant to hit the block limit as fast as they can. It's okay if they want to but we don't treat it as "the new defense limit" and we don't balance Paladins thinking they have a 100% chance to block. It's something the community has identified as not only possible, but likely, and it's one of the reasons we've changed the way blocking works for paladins.
- These changes are all planned for patch 4.0.3a when the devastation of Azeroth takes place and we will not implement them yet in the live realms. Some of them may be active in the beta - the switch to Wild Defense for example was hotfixed to the beta realms recently.
Here are some additional changes that we will apply in Patch 4.0.3a:
- Guardian of the Ancient Kings - Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. The cooldown and duration remain the same.
- Icebound Fortitude - Damage reduction changed from 30% to 20%. The cooldown and duration remain the same.
- Shield Wall - Damage reduction changed from 40% to 50%. The cooldown and duration remain the same.
- Glyph of Shield Wall - Now improves damage reduction by 10% (up to 60%), but only adds 1 minute cooldown.
- Survival Instincts - Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Duration remains the same.
- Bear Form - Stamina bonus reduced from 20% to 10% and Heart of the Wild bonus reduced from 10% to 6%. The bear's health should be close to that of a plate tank with this change.
- Vigilance - No longer reduces damage by 3%, but still resets the cooldown of taunt and grants the warrior Vengeance.