Ghostcrawler and his crew are back in World of Warcraft, and they’re making changes again. Not content with the epic changes to the talent system , GC has also announced that there will be huge changes to the basic stats in the game, right down to the level of changing how combat works altogether. (Blessing of Kings has an excellent summary and general critique of the announced changes ).
In amongst the changes is a supposed “fix” for the problems that Block has caused this expansion – block capping and more. From now on, combat will resolve in a two-roll system – one roll for avoidance, and one for block. It sounds simple, it sounds complete, GC’s clearly very pleased with it –
And it’s going to cause any number of problems.
Today Theck, known throughout theorycrafting land as “The Bringer of Numbers and Pounding Headaches”, sits down at his Scary Maths Desk at Sacred Duty to explain just why Ghostcrawler’s solution is, in fact, a bad idea, and one that will have some seriously non-obvious implications for tanking –
“In the (true) one-roll system, block and avoidance are completely independent – gaining 10% avoidance doesn’t change how much block you have (provided you aren’t capped). But the two-roll system inherently couples avoidance and block (or more accurately, couples block to avoidance – it’s a one-way street, in that avoidance affects block but block doesn’t affect avoidance). The two-roll system introduces an interdependence that leads to some really unintuitive behavior. When you increase your avoidance, you are effectively reducing your mastery-to-block conversion factor. If it’s 1 mastery = 1.4% block at 30% avoidance, it drops to 1 mastery = 1.2% block at 40% avoidance.
So the statement that that “block gives a consistent value, independent of avoidance” is clearly false using this metric, because increasing your avoidance reduces the effectiveness of every point of mastery you have.”
This post is long, it’s detailed, and I advise you to put your thinking cap on and caffinate up before reading, because it’s got maths in it. And we’re not talking the usual levels of simple theorycraft here – Theck’s bringing the calculus, and he’s bringing it hard.
But having said all that, even if scary formulae bring you out in a rash, Theck explains his central points clearly and well. It would appear that Ghostcrawler may be making the classic system designer mistake of underestimating the complexity of moving from a single to a multi-dice-roll system. He’s also failing to learn from his competition, as SWTOR is already struggling with a similar system and its consequences for non-obvious stat priorities.
I have to say, even before Theck brought the brains to the discussion, the idea of a multi-roll combat system was making me twitch a bit. But chances are, what GC says is going to become law, whether we like it or not. So, if you’re going to be playing a tank in Mists of Pandaria, this post is probably a must-read, to start understanding the additional complexity that is coming down the mountain with the Pandas.
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