It’s about time we get an official heads-up on it
Block, block, block. Last week I got my T8 leg token. I still haven’t purchased tanking pants for it though, because of the ridiculous itemization. Block? Are you kidding? Looking over T8 right now the future isn’t shiny at all, and I’d much rather wear a DK set. But there may be light at the end of the tunnel and my token just might not end up being turned in for the off-legpiece …
What I want you to take away from this post is: Start collecting block pieces right now, as they are easily accessible from farm content and no one fancies them. You can thank me later.
Since I saw T8 stats I thought to myself that there’s really only two possible outlooks:
- Blizzard wants to get rid of warrior tanks
- There’s a buff for block in the pipeline
It really is as simple as that. Most T8 pieces are no upgrades from T7 (not even to speak of T7.5) because they “waste” most of their stats on block rating and shield block value. At the time being, these are “nice to have” secondary stats for a warrior tank, after defense, dodge, parry, expertise and hit. They rank #6 and #7, and our Tier 8 is full of them? While we struggle to stay crit immune due to many awesome tanking pieces not sporting defense rating? What the hell is going on? (And what – for Hodir’s sake – is the matter with ArP on tanking gloves?)
Relief in blue
Now, finally, there’s a blue statement on it. The man himself Ghostcrawler states that they overestimated block and it turned out much weaker than they thought. Part of it being that the good ol’ crushing blows we used to giggle at with our sweet blocking awesomeness are gone, and replaced by high magical damage – which a warrior can only mitigate by up to 8% with one talent and one meta gem, and the amount mitigated is far from spectacular compared to other tanking classes’ tools against magical damage spikes.
Right now the only way to go is to spec and glyph for maximum cooldown availability, for shield wall and last stance being there every time you need them – to the cost of other valuable glyphs and talents (gimped threat stats, anyone?).
The outlook
Whatever the incoming change for block is gonna be, you might want to get into the one or other Naxx25 pug again to pick up some of the blocking pieces dropping there. Your future (magic?) mitigation stat might turn out to be block.
Even if the change is gonna be something completely different, at least the devs see and understand that their plans for us didn’t quite work out as intended, and that some kind of buff is needed on the warrior end of tanking.
If block is gonna be buffed I see one hell of an opportunity for us here. Right now it’s really easy to get to 40% avoidance and 20% block. It just comes naturally. From there you can easily go for up to 55-60% avoidance – or pick the blocking route. Remember that with 40% avoidance + 60% block every non-avoided hit is gonna end up on your shield. With an appropriate set, a buff to block in general and damage shield the mitigation & threat this gets us might turn out really, really sweet.
Go get your SBV + BR pieces now, for chances are you’re going to want them soon (and if not it’s still always fun to build a block set, right?).