4.2 Changes to mastery - Protection

[shaak]

Would love to hear opinions on what the changes to holy shield will mean for our mastery.
Will it still be worthwhile going for avoidance cap at the expense of stamina?

Also, Laz gratz on finally getting 75 stam to chest you cheap skate. :P

[Cjindry]

First of all is block cap and not avoidance cap :P (its a bit different yeah xD)
Talking about stats seems that will be even more profitable than it is now because you will have to use less stat(%) in order to reach the bloc-cap. This doesn't mean too that would be easy, i saw a lot of new tanking items missing mastery so we will have to get it through reforge for sure.
In fact to get our block cap we will have also to sacrifice less stamina then we used before (because we have more combat ratings overall (and to reforge with))

Remember that with blizzard nothing is for sure until is on live (and even then it still can change very fast)
So atm the changes will make us tank better spike damage ( block will reach a 53% value that atm is (imo) too much (even if for short))
and in the worst case we will be blocking 33% of damage that isnt that bad after all.
(ps remember new meta change, for us will be more effective due to armor DR)

To understand the potential of block cap you should look at the WCS(worst case situation) that you can occur.
Considering hit by 100k (after armor dmg reduction)
WCS without blockcap is 2 full hit (mitigated only by armor (~59% before DR)) (200dmg)
WCS with blockcap is 2 blocked hit (mitigated by armor and block value) (140dmg (because 60 were blocked))

Remember also that less damage you keep less healing you will need so you can allow raid to more dps.

this is my point of view, ofc maybe not be the best because it change for each playstyle (to make a short example i found very hard to play without hit/exp in my last guild were we where lacking MD/ToT)