In BoL, block has either been completely neutered or not working properly. I have main tanked dual wielding everything in the expansion on my guardian from normal/challenge to Sol eye and PoW clearing everything and not once i needed to equip a shield. I occasionally only do it because the shield has more potency than my off-hand weapon but not for its block or protection value. Mitigation has been another contentious topic this expansion. In the early BoL days, i had around 30k mitigation in raids and I rarely if ever had any issues with incoming damage. It appears the mechanics are designed in a way where they outright kill you e.g. dot cure failure, deathtouch/co-op strike (in PoW), script failure or bleedthrough. Not saying mitigation is completely useless but i did not see an incremental increase in my defenses as my mitigation went up with gear and same is the case with Block. There was a time when i was building with a balance of block/mit gear but that was quickly left behind and made way for dps stats and only go for defensive stuff if it has more potency or resolve. That said, Block vs Mit conversation is still have its say depending on the content you are doing.
Arclite gave a pretty solid rundown. If you're on an SK, we have significantly fewer tools to deal with extended periods of spikey physical damage, so I typically run evasion/shield for PoW/Sol Ro. It's 13-21% block, but it's something, I suppose.... Still broken as the US Govt budget, though. Thanks mechanics team....
To Arclite's point, my normal group runs with an SK tank who has 20k mit and a measly 66% block chance (uses 2hander). My serker has 25k or 36k mit depending on what stance I'm using at the time... I have seen 0 difference in the amount of damage taken in either stance, with or without a shield.
Trieko - let me know when you run Sol Ro - and get to Quaaron (sp) how much damage your SK takes there. Note - I have two runs to finish the overall quest in there. Last run was 1 hr 20 mins.
I have already told him he won't last at all when mit matters again, so it's refreshing to hear that it matters now as opposed to waiting for next expac.
Unless you're a monk. I have all the mit of a wet sheet of toilet paper, but I can main tank the nastier mobs this xpac no problem.
Finished Sol ro in 22 minutes "combat time" dual wielding all the way through with a stacked group of dps and solo healer. Quaaron with 2 lamps only. I do take spike damage at random parts in that fight, not sure how and why it happens and frankly not fussed at this point.
Not sure I understand what you mean there. May be it is different for brawlers but i wonder if you remove all gear/buffs that give you block or avoidance stats, you may realise that you really don't need much block at all to tank everything in this expansion. Would be an interesting experiment.
A lot depends on your healer setup. I sit at 30k solo on my SK, tanked everything. With the right healer setup, it's all doable flawlessly I think. I do run evasion set+sword/board on the Scald/Commander fights just to help the healers as much as I can. Also, I'm not dps reforged, so I don't lose a ton of dps dropping the 2her+ADC adorn. Group setup has a lot to do with your survivability this expac. Brawlers have their avoidance advantage over plate tanks. Guards, and I'm pretty sure zerks, have a group wide mit buff they can keep up nearly 100% of the time, and the guard mit buff has a physical damage stoneskin proc to it. SK is a DR/temp avoid tank, and with ShadowKnight's Furor not working on Scald, that reduces how long you can drag that DR out through the fight without help from your healers. Highly recommend looking into a fury/templar healer setup, it feels darned near invincible if you time everything out correctly.
Given the tank's death-prevents, healer death-prevents, and so forth probably gives tanks a little room to customize their play style. I mean, for really painful fights, carry extra Bardings of Health and for those who can a shield, you can swap out.
It's a good read, I still block 17-23%, dodge 3-6%, and Ripostes 18-35% depending on the fight. If you're struggling with incoming autoattack damage, a shield does help. Like I said above, there are only 2 fights I use a shield for.
Since ExoTwo is not responding, I'll reply for him. - He wants to know in terms of level 100 for a FTP, non-raiding. - His usual group is: Fury, Mystic, Wizzy, Warlock, SK (ExoTwo) and usually either a Brig or Pally Merc. - I believe he has mostly gone for block > mit - Offtanks mostly because his computer is bad so he crashes a lot. The merc often outtaunts him too.
Mitigation hasn’t mattered since PoP and u could argue then that it wasn’t accurately applied. That should answer ur question
when do mercs suck again? oh and the two mercs are Lady Crow and Matri Dut (killer in stonebrunt) Do you spam ShadowKnight's Furor in raids? oh and maybe consider strikethrough. I would assume that the mobs there would have very high strikethrough especilly the final named of a new 120 x4 raid instance.
I've considered that Scald may have 100% strike through, there's been no information from the devs about it and I don't believe the scout ability will tell you that info. Would be great if it did though. Also, no, I don't spam Furor. It's usually used in rotation with other temps depending on what's currently running from healers as well.
Block, dodge and parry work fine on Scald, I still avoid far more of his attacks than he manages to land. Riposte just plain doesn't happen though. So I don't think it's strikethrough. It's something new. I don't run with the full 70% uncontested block, but if I try to tank something in offensive stance for example, which drops my UCB to about 20%, I notice a huge difference, and often end up dead, even with the great healers I have. The flipside of that is in defensive stance, having a quick glance at ACT I have several fights in sol ro where the named managed to land a sum total of zero melee hits on me. There is literally no reason to use health bardings in solusek's eye and PoWar. And no real reason to raid anything else. This is a disappointing statement. There are good tanks who understand how to play their character, how and when to use defensives depending on the fight, how to support their healers, how and when to protect their group and how to manage their aggro with patience and forethought so they can manage mem-wipes, hate position swaps and all that joyous stuff. And there are tanks who don't understand any of that stuff and just press buttons at intervals they guess might be right (they're not). I've gotta give a mention to channeler. If you absolutely don't want to die, accept no substitute.
Running a mystic/inq setup for pretty much everything in raids. I reckon mystic alone is sufficient to keep me up in most fights but good inq buffs are hard to ignore. I think i have to go as far as AoM when i last had a channeler in MT group. Not seen a quality player play channeler in a long time. And yes I agree that its a terrible mindset to rely and dump everything on the healers. A tank should micromanage not only their own group but the entire raid. Less selfish builds that results in you (the tank) getting walloped because you are lazy to switch stances or gear up properly. This has not changed since the first raid encounter of EQ2. Death saves come into play in very specific fights like one of the commanders in PoW (left side) where the deathtouch happens every 45 seconds and there is bound to be times when you may not have much up to protect yourself.
