question

[shrill]

how much defence do you iron edge warriors have? jus comparing i got 527 atm is that good or bad

[Baron Ur]

OVER NINE THOUSAND OLOL 

[delling]

While defence is nice, from a healer perspective you are aiming for vast amounts of defence and parry, and block.

These are the main abilities that allow healers to regen mana, especially dodge + parry. Build up enough of both and you will see 'chains' of them that allow considerable healer regen.

Block is the key to no crushing blows, as far as I understand it. Defence increases all of your defensive stats by a bit, and reduces your chance of being crit by 5% at 490 (I think).

Anyhoo, 530 sounds pretty good, as long as you have the other stats too

[kawe]

As Dell said, defense is nice (personally I think it's always nice, although there are those who would decry its value post 490), but the key is maintaining a good balance of everything. A good way to choose your gear is to work out how much damage reduction it would give you in comparison to what you have.

For all intents and purposes you can compare dodge and parry directly. They both ultimately come down to % avoidance.

Defense is another one that you can at least vaguely look at the combined %s of dodge parry and miss you'd gain from whatever amount you equip.

Block value is a little harder to weigh up against the other stats - it directly subtracts from the damage you take if you're partial blocking (which you should be, a large quantity of the time ) and also adds directly to shield slam. And this all benefits from Shield mastery for +30% block value. Block value has been overlooked for some time, but it can be quite a nice addition since (especially on bosses) you're gonna have sheld block up nearly always, and -400 damage to every physical hit is not to be sniffed at.

Block chance % isn't usually a cause for concern, it generally takes care of itself, and you'll find yourself sitting between 20-27% most of the time, which is fine. 25% is somewhat of a magic number, as once you've hit 25% block chance shield block's +75% leaves you safe from that extremely unlucky couple of % that an attack will not be blocked when you have shield block buff up.

Block also negates the possibility that you will be critically hit - and no, this isn't as entirely redundant as you think. No matter how much defense you have, there is always a minimum chance that you will be critically struck, something roughly to the tune of ~0.1% or some such. A blocked attack however, has a flat 0% chance to be critical.


But excuse my rudeness, I haven't even answered your question yet!

I'm sitting on 525 defense at the moment.

[shrill]

so im doing ok then all i wanted 2 know an ty for the help guys i got decienct block an dodge aswell   an ty to trigun and quatl for the BM run

[Starbrow]

Kawe's post just about sums it up for how you should look at things. Insane avoidance is worth nothing if you get hit for 11k. 75% armor mitigation isn't worth that much if you always get hit, critted and crushed. High block value is shit if you don't have the HP to soak the (rare) two crushing + a crit in a row.

As our tanks are currently set up, they're looking at a good 12-13k HP unbuffed, about 30-40% avoidance, 400-600 block value (I think?), 12-14k armor, and 500ish (plus/minus 20) defense.

As for the druids, they're not relevant to the discussion