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Q u o t e:
The actual problem with block isn't "It suck VS bosses" but rather, it doesn't scale.

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You're going to have to explain this better. Scaling is generally defined as continually improving with gear once you are at max level (because below max level, increasing ranks takes care of it). Does block improve as your gear improves? Well, yes it does. You get more block rating on items and you get more block value on items. Your Strength also improves, which improves your block value. Here is an example of block not scaling: In Naxx 25 gear, you block 25% of the time for 400 damage blocked. In Ulduar 25, you block 25% of the time for 400 damage blocked.

You can argue that block doesn't mitigate enough, which is an argument you could probably justify. I don't understand how it doesn't scale unless you are using a different definition of the word than I am used to.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
Of all the band aid fixes that could have been made, simply doubling block value was probably the smartest.

It doesn't solve the problem going forward, but it wasn't meant to. It was mainly meant to make gear with block value on it reasonably competitive to gear that has avoidance stats on it. I think it does that reasonably well in the case of paladins and gear without block rating.

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This was our logic. It doesn't even need to be "reasonably competitive." It just needs to not sit there junking up your gear as if it were Spirit or Spell Pen or something.

As to the original topic, if the issue is that block would probably work better mechanically as a percent of damage blocked, then that is an interesting idea that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago we are exploring. You can probably find the thread. However it is also a very big change with some perhaps unpredictable results. We would have to change block converting from Strength, how Shield Slam does its damage, and possibly lower dodge, parry and miss across the board. It's something we're exploring but it's very dangerous to put in without a whole lot of testing and iteration.

I know it must feel we are very conservative sometimes. That's just kind of a Blizzard thing. We know players tend to respond better to good changes that are slow coming than to half-baked changes that are done quickly. This is why we say things like "When it's ready."

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
I am sorry, i used a WoW term incorrectly. That is my bad. It is true that as your gear improves your block "scales" up.

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It's not a WoW term. Heck, this game has more than enough jargon as it is, and the community just likes to add more. I just didn't understand what you meant, but I get it now.

I will add one thing however. As I said above, we can see a model where block is a percentage of damage and that might eventually be the way we go. However, it is a conclusion the community often reaches that everything in the game needs to be a percent. We don't agree with that and we don't design the game that way. Your health doesn't increase by a percentage as you reach higher tiers -- it just increases by flat amounts as you acquire more gear (same as block value). The damage done by Devastate and Shield Slam and Heroic Strike all have flat components. Those are modified by attack power or shield block, but they still do not scale perfectly with boss health and damage. Your Heroic Strike doesn't hit harder just because the boss is bigger (unless you're talking about being flooded with rage or something), even though your parry avoids more damage when the boss is bigger.

Now, if we released twenty levels of raid content per expansion then these flat numbers would get to be a problem because they would be totally overwhelmed by the parts of the equation that did scale. But we don't do that. The flat part only has to last long enough to get us to the next character level increase where base stats and ability ranks will increase. Characters scale with level and the scaling with gear only has to last long enough to reach the next level cap. Make sense?

Put another way, if you could block for 20,000 damage, then it would be illogical to argue that block needed to be a percentage in order to be useful. It would an amazing stat and would remain an amazing stat until bosses started hitting for 200,000 damage... which is a long way off.

Again, this is not a declaration that we'll never change block. Just makes sure you're arguments are not strictly "it has to be a percentage or it won't work."

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
IMHO, the root problem here is that tank avoidance in entry-level raid gear is just too high. Since tanks can avoid so many hits, bosses have to hit that much harder to challenge the tanks' mitigation and challenge the healers. While this was sort of an okay situation in Naxx, avoidances have only gone up, and so in order to challenge the healers, now you have bosses hitting for 22k and spiking the tanks' health. In that scenario, block is pretty crummy.

The way I see it, block is strong when your tanks' "pure" avoidances are low, meaning bosses can be designed to hit fairly light. If your entry-level tanks have 40% avoidance, well... then the bosses have to hit hard to make up for that, and block will be weak. Maybe I'm just crazy, but I see a causal link here.

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You're not crazy.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
It was once said you wanted paladins to block smaller amounts all of the time, and warrior to block less but bigger amounts. Is that still a design goal or are we going to see, that shifting because it doesn't currently work like that?

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I'm not sure it's that an important design goal. It's more important to make block overall important. Paladins and warriors have enough other differences that we're less worried about keeping their block unique.

Again, we're talking about large potential changes in this kind of discussion. In general, you can't just assume all other things would stay the same.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
There was a very good suggestion earlier (it may have been in another thread) by somebody that basically said "You can block at most 20% of an incoming attack". Tweak the percentage as required, but if something like that was in place, block values could be tuned for raid boss attacks without fear of making warriors/paladins immortal to heroic and trash mobs.

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Yes. There is a third type of scaling in these discussions, which is attacks from underpowered mobs all the way up to attacks from hard bosses. Capping it would work, but that even more makes us want to combine the two block stats into one (since amount blocked matters less).

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Q u o t e:
Good design would be that the relative values of my Power Word: Shield spell and Flash Heal spell remain constant with respect to each other. This should be true of all abilities.

It's not part of your design, however, and I see that as a design flaw.

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I can see the appeal of that from a purity of design perspective. But it’s not the way we design the game. We like that players change which spells they use as they gear up or acquire certain set bonuses. That makes the game more dynamic and interesting instead of the same rotation that worked in Naxx (or quest blues) also working in hard-mode Icecrown. Theorycrafters get a lot of mileage out of certain talents abilities or other gear choices changing their value depending on where you are in the progression. It’s a fun part of the game for many of us.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer