Today, according to the wowinsider daily Q&A column, we still can know some info about shields, forums, and more on raid difficulty. Anything wanna know? First, feel thankful to the asker Super Brain and Feli.
I have yet to get Wrath (I know, "PRAISE BE") although I am getting it this Thursday. I was wondering about the new raiding system. Which is harder, 10-man or 25-man? For example is the 10-man easier in the point that you need less players but harder as in they need to be more well geared? Or is the 25-man harder?
You can start both 10 and 25-man raiding with the same gear. They're tuned so you don't need to run one before the other at all. The 10-man is probably easier to organize than the 25-man due to having fewer people, but as far as encounter difficulty...
In my experience, the 10-mans are slightly harder with a few exceptions where a very specific encounter is more challenging in the 25-man incarnation. Overall, the 10 is more difficult, which quite honestly boggles my mind. The 25-man is simply not tuned high enough. If you were around for Molten Core, you might remember how early 40-man raiding was. Only 15-20 of your 40-man raid was at all important. The other half of the raid could die instantly or be completely AFK and you could still kill bosses. That's current 25-man raiding. Only 10-15 of you are important. It's a huge joke.
The 10-man is tuned more or less right on. It's easy, but not so easy you can let half of your raid die. In some cases, one death spells your doom. The tuning is pretty good. Simple, but everyone needs to contribute.
I don't think it necessarily needs to be so lopsided, the 25-mans are just horribly undertuned. Some Heroics honestly pose a bigger challenge. I'd even say select encounters are overtuned for a 10-man encounter when put up against the 25s.
Biggest example is Malygos' Vortex ability in the 10-man. It's tuned to 'challenge' Circle of Healing Priests and Resto Druids in a format where you're not guaranteed to have them. If you want to challenge a specific class (or spec, actually) keep it to the 25-man where you're pretty much guaranteed to have one, eh? Keep that out of the 10-man. 10-man Naxx encounters don't require Mind Control for a reason, you know?
I'm a Prot Warrior, and I've now come across several shields such as the Icechill Buckler where it says it has both 128 Block AND upon equiping it will "increase the block value of your sheild." Which of those two numbers are what's referred to as the SBV (Sheild Block Value) and whats the difference between the two stats?
We'll use The Skull of Ruin as our example when explaining this, because it has all of the appropriate stats on it while also looking super awesome. If the mouseover tooltip doesn't work, just click through the link and take a gander at its stats, then come back.
Shield Block Value is the stat listed as "Increases the block value of your shield by ##." That means part of the item's budget was spent on additional points of block, so you add that to the number below the armor, which in the case of this shield is 211. This is how much you block for, so in other words, when you block an attack that's how much damage reduction you'll get. As a Protection Warrior, that block value also adds to your Shield Slams and all of that. Another thing that adds to your block value is Strength. Unless I'm mistaken (pretty sure I'm not in this case), you gain 1 block value for every 2 points of Strength.
The other Block stat is shield block rating. That's not how much you block for, but rather how often you'll block. I believe that at level 80, 20 block rating is equivalent to a 1% chance to block.
On your Icechill Buckler, you don't have any Shield Block Rating, so no bonus to how often you block. However, you do have block value, so it will give a boost to how much damage you block. Make sense? If not, our resident Warrior addict wrote about it awhile back if you're looking for more information on it.
Feel free to ask us if you have any troubles.
