Dodge nerfed 20% in Icecrown?

From the wow.com article

In patch 3.3 Blizzard is implementing a 20% dodge reduction via a spell that will be present in Icecrown Citadel's raid called Chill of the Throne. As Daelo points out, if your tank had 30% dodge, he now has 10%. They are doing this in order to negate the spike damage that's become prevalent in raids lately.

So while dodge will be nerfed, the ceiling on damage given to a tank will likely decrease. This will in turn, at least theoretically, make healing more about strategy (applying HoTs and planning heals) and less reactive (twitch response to apply the biggest heal at exactly the right time).

This is interesting to note as it's a move towards the Cataclysm way of tanking, as has been explained by Ghostcrawler: less avoidance on tanks, less spike damage, and thus requiring smaller heals.

http://www.wow.com/2009/10/29/chill-of-the-throne-dodge-nerfed-20-in-icecrown-citadel/


Now this seems interesting in many aspects. (As in wow, mitigation will finally be relevant in raids?). I'm also intrigued as to the planned lack of spike damage. (Think plasma blast, impale etc) This can possibly mean many things a) fights are going to be LONG. b) fights will require a lot of movement c) fights take a lot of strategy d) some other possible way to torture us e) ???

I just dont get what Blizzard are trying to do with this? Are they trying to make tanking harder or healing more interesting? And it seems like im gonna be looking for EH over dodge now as ill need something to soak up the extra if i cant mitigate it, I know Blizzard have said they will reduce incoming damage on tanks, but I can guarantee that it will be relative damage, and so the best way for tanks to prepare for icecrown is still going to be stacking in the Stamina.

Oh and i guess we can sadly wave goodbye to druid tanks with this nerf. (although actually as the better ones have 50/60k they may come into their own?, we`ll have to see)

Sometimes Blizzard give with one hand and take away with the other.

Just picked up another interesting titbit from WoW.com;

What I would like to see in Cataclysm is higher health pools but also lower heals (and tank avoidance) overall. Hopefully everyone won't be on the verge of almost dying, yet the risk of overhealing will be more real such that you can't just madly spam all of the time if you want to make it to the end of the encounter.

Well druids aren't going to get hit harder. As in, all tanks lose a FLAT 20%. Think the tank that actually loses from it is DKs since their threat is gonna drop a lot since one of their threat abilites activates after they've dodged or parried.

But druids rely only on dodge rating...

Correct me if i am wrong and this has changed...

They dont parry they have no weapon...
They dont block they have no shield...


They dodge because they can still dodge... so if you take it and break it apart...

The druid is recieving a minus to their dodge which they can only do, and alot of tanks will have more than 20% dodge but taking dodge away from a druid is gonna be harsher because they have less to mitigate with, although it will be from everyone so it will even out more than just flat % away from a druid, but it will mean some slight harshness towards druids as we warriors and paladins could stack parry and block, where as they can only stack dodge :'(

Not a single reasonable tank stacks parry and block. Really, that would be beyond stupid.

When i say stack i assume people would use some slight common sense and look at collecting parry and block instead of dodge.

I don't know really. As it's a flat 20% loss, since unless you have less than 20% dodge then stacking parry or block will not help you at all.

As in +1% dodge will still be better than +1% parry due to DR.

But...

This could be interesting...

If you swapped out enough dodge with parry and block and ended up with alot more parry and block then your dodge was below 20% do you think it will go into minus?

interesting... seems like a bit of a random mechanic to add in at this stage of the lich king though.

They seems to be moving towards cataclysm in the sense that they want to bring avoidance down a lot.
Also, seeing the amount of dodge that's on gear I think it would be very hard to drop it below 20%.

Yea pointless dropping it on purpose to just go "hah i havent got a 20% drop!" lol without picking up on something else

Catacylsm seems like it is going to be more of level 60 to be honest, more mana efficiency along with maybe healing rotations because of less spikes the heals will need to be managed, longer fights could potentially mean DPS like feral druids could start re-appearing heavily if they got some nice constant damage along with mages taking a back seat again! lol unless they start picking up some MP5 or something, it really depends quite how long these fights are gonna be we will start seeing, i mean if you got an arcane mage spamming for like 10 minutes with no mana problems (i dunno if thats even possible) and the boss is dead in 9 then it doesnt matter, but if we are looking at more of a 15 minute fight and a 3rd of the fight mages cant do damage, might revert to going frost DPS lol only joking but might see some differences.