EU+US Armor/Block VS Versatility?

Henry

Henry

Veteran
Question for you guys:

Has anyone crunched numbers on how many points of Armor/Block equate to one point of Versatility in terms of damage reduction?

Doing a bit of theorycrafting for Restoration Shaman:

Epic Shield of the Stockades has +2 more Armor and +5 more Block than a Blue BG Shield, but potentially misses out on +2 Versatility (from an Adaptable roll).

Which would reduce more damage?

I have the understanding that Armor and Block only apply to physical damage, and Versatility works for both physical and magical damage reduction.

One thing I’m not clear on is how does an ability like, say, Aimed Shot work? Is that physical damage? Or magical damage? Aimed Shot crits are the only thing that really hurt me at this point. Would the extra Armor and Block from the Stockades shield make more of a difference than an extra 2 points of Versatility?

Thanks in advance!
 
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Henry said:
Question for you guys:

Has anyone crunched numbers on how many points of Armor/Block equate to one point of Versatility in terms of damage reduction?

Doing a bit of theorycrafting for Restoration Shaman:

Epic Shield of the Stockades has +5 more Armor and +10 more Block than a Blue BG Shield, but potentially misses out on +2 Versatility (from an Adaptable roll).

Which would reduce more damage?

I have the understanding that Armor and Block only apply to physical damage, and Versatility works for both physical and magical damage reduction.

One thing I’m not clear on is how does an ability like, say, Aimed Shot work? Is that physical damage? Or magical damage? Aimed Shot crits are the only thing that really hurt me at this point. Would the extra Armor and Block from the Stockades shield make more of a difference than an extra 2 points of Versatility?

Thanks in advance!
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Armour is nice, but it doesn't help you against magic damage. Versatility does, so while it doesn't provide AS much mitigation, it does mitigate against magic damage based attacks, which over the course of a game will end up saving you more health than straight up armour.
 
I know when i equip a shield on my warrior that it amounts to 10% more physical damage reduction. Not sure how that translates on a shaman but you can check by looking at your armor rating with and without a shield in your character pane.
 
You want epic stocks unless you are VSing a caster. But I wouldn't even bother swapping.
Aimed shot is physical damage. You can find that right here:

yeSoJsD.png


The block will increase the amount of damage you can block but not the chance to block, which is pretty low unless you are a prot warrior. So not the most helpful but still nice. I don't believe you can block ranged physical abilities, not sure on that.
I'd use epic stocks with https://www.wowhead.com/item=38860 all day.
 
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To answer your question specifically:

1 point of versatility at 29 (since 20s scale to 29 in BGs) = 0.094% damage reduction
1 point of armor at 29 (with a forthcoming caveat) = ~0.224% physical damage reduction

Therefore, in terms of just physical damage reduction, 1 point of armor is worth about 2.4 points of versatility.

However, hang on to your seats, because math is about to get scaly!

The caveat is that every point of armor provides less damage reduction than the point before it. So, you'll need to calculate what the actual armor differences are. I currently have 141 armor. If you have less armor, then you'll see slightly larger damage reduction than 0.224% per point. Likewise, if you have more armor, you'll see slightly smaller damage reduction per point.

More importantly, versatility directly impacts a resto shaman's healing output. In addition to 0.094% damage reduction per point, resto shamans see a boost of 0.188% healing throughput per point. Add the healing throughput and damage reduction together, and a resto shaman's sees more of an advantage in damage reduction + self-heals from a point of versatility (total 0.282%) than a point of armor.

To be fair, we're really splitting hairs here, to the tune of tenths and thousandths of a percent. We're talking the realm of a rounding error, but the discussion does inform gearing strategy.

If you find yourself sitting in stuns more often (which come from melee opponents), then more armor will serve you better, and you'll want to choose the epic Shield of the Stockades. If you find yourself locked out of nature school casting i.e. receiving shears and counterspells from casters more often (as I do), then versatility is the better way to go, which means the BG crate shield.
 
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Kirise said:
To answer your question specifically:

1 point of versatility at 29 (since 20s scale to 29 in BGs) = 0.094% damage reduction
1 point of armor at 29 (with a forthcoming caveat) = ~0.224% physical damage reduction

Therefore, in terms of just physical damage reduction, 1 point of versatility is worth about 2.4 points of armor.

However, hang on to your seats, because math is about to get scaly!

The caveat is that every point of armor provides less damage reduction than the point before it. So, you'll need to calculate what the actual armor differences are. I currently have 141 armor. If you have less armor, then you'll see slightly larger damage reduction than 0.224% per point. Likewise, if you have more armor, you'll see slightly smaller damage reduction per point.

More importantly, versatility directly impacts a resto shaman's healing output. In addition to 0.094% damage reduction per point, resto shamans see a boost of 0.188% healing throughput per point. Add the healing throughput and damage reduction together, and a resto shaman's sees more of an advantage in damage reduction + self-heals from a point of versatility (total 0.282%) than a point of armor.

To be fair, we're really splitting hairs here, to the tune of tenths and thousandths of a percent. We're talking the realm of a rounding error, but the discussion does inform gearing strategy.

If you find yourself sitting in stuns more often (which come from melee opponents), then more armor will serve you better, and you'll want to choose the epic Shield of the Stockades. If you find yourself locked out of nature school casting i.e. receiving shears and counterspells from casters more often (as I do), then versatility is the better way to go, which means the BG crate shield.
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Awesome! Thanks very much!

I'm confused, though, if 1 point of armor = 0.224% reduction, and 1 point of vers = 0.094% reduction, then isn't Armor better in the equation? You said 1 Vers = 2.4 Armor...Wouldn't it be the opposite? 1 Armor = 2.4 Vers?

Mathing. It's hard. I might be doing it wrong.
 
Henry said:
Awesome! Thanks very much!

I'm confused, though, if 1 point of armor = 0.224% reduction, and 1 point of vers = 0.094% reduction, then isn't Armor better in the equation? You said 1 Vers = 2.4 Armor...Wouldn't it be the opposite? 1 Armor = 2.4 Vers?

Mathing. It's hard. I might be doing it wrong.
Click to expand...

Doh! You're correct. I reversed the numbers. I'll edit that now.
 
I forgot to mention block. 1 point of block = ~0.216% damage reduction, subject to the same kind of diminishing returns as armor. But remember that damage reduction from block only happens for a successful block. I can't find a concrete source, so blocking a physical attack happens either 5% or 10% of the time. That means overall physical damage mitigation from a point of block sits around either 0.0108% or 0.0216%. Which is to say that at best, a point of block provides 1/10th of what a point of armor provides.
 
You can't block when stunned and when enemies are hitting you from behind. Also, I believe you can't block when casting or using channeled spells, unless it is specified in the spell's tooltip.

While this doesn't affect the Armor x Versa discussion, it certainly makes Block very irrelevant to healers.
 
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Block is worthwhile for a resto shaman in like a "back strafing away from hunter pets" kinda way, but rarely in any other situation. You cant choose to block an aimed shot or anything. It's the physical damage reduction from the armor that is 100% the reason to wear a shield.

That said, this discussion gets real fun when we're talking about prot pallies and blocking spells (or in SL when warriors will have shield block)
 
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