Talk:Block

From WoWWiki

how much damage do you block exactly. ? based on strength,. CJ 06:04, 27 Feb 2006 (EST)

Not sure this is accurate...

Blocked attacks cannot be criticals and cannot be crushing blows, which further decreases average rate of damage recieved by classes using a shield.

Because of the table-based way WoW does combat, the percentage of attacks that is blocked shouldn't actually affect the chance of having a crit land on you -- If a mob has a 5% chance to crit you, equipping a shield that gives you a 3% chance to block still gives the mob a 5% chance to crit you. So goes my understanding, anyhow.

(I can't say for crushing blows.) --Elfchief 13:25, 14 July 2006

• If you have a 20% chance to crit, and I have a 20% chance to block it implies that you only have a chance to get a critical on me 80% of the time -- your effective crit would be 16%. However, this benefit is largely random -- by chance I could prevent every critical (your 20% to crit could happen on only the 20% that I block) or none (my 20% of blocks only affect normal strikes and all 20% of your crits aren't blocked). Regardless, damage is mitigated, but how much varies wildly. The most likely scenario though is that in a battle of 100 strikes, you would land 16 crits and I would prevent 4 (and block some or all of the damage from those 4 and 16 other normal strikes). --Drolfeir 01:27, 18 July 2006 (EDT)

I'll add to myself here that with the 2.0 addition of resilience that determing how effective +defense and blocking are at mitigating critical hits is going to be even harder! So, in the above example, add the caveat 'ignore the effects of increased defense and resilience'. --Drolfeir 02:00, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Yes, it's the same code for monsters and players. The programmer who wrote it says so. A monster's crit is the result of it not being any other result from the table, so a crit cannot be blocked becuase block is a different table entry. This works both ways.

--Beaza 10:16, 31 January 2007 (PST)

Ranged attacks?

I've noticed with my Hunter and my Warrior that ranged attacks can in fact be blocked, either by mobs and by players, with my Hunter I sometimes noticed that my combat log said something like "Mob takes X damage (X blocked)" on auto shot attacks (ranged), and on my Warrior I had a ranged NPC to attack me and I used Shield Block and I partially blocked the attack (for 86 I think, which was my max block damage at the time), would be nice if some more people could confirm this. --Ner'Arth 15:08, 9 May 2008 (GMT+0)

A bit of a late response, granted, but yes: Ranged attacks can be blocked. Compared with normal melee attacks, you're unlikely to notice ranged blocking very often unless actually looking for it, as (last time I checked) the "block" message only shows up in the combat log (rather than as a hovering message). As a sidenote, Holy Shield (and similar abilities, disregarding Damage Shield) will deal damage to a ranged attacker upon blocking, making it probably one of the most efficient forms of ranged avoidance there is (next to a talented Shield Block). --Cormorra (talk) 09:14, 25 June 2009 (UTC)