Parry Rating Returns, Is Renamed "Critical Strike Rating"

A little tongue in cheek here, but as it turns out, plate tanks are still going to be able to gear for avoidance.

You may recall a passive called Riposte that was added during Mists which gave Protection Warriors and Blood Death Knights (but not Protection Paladins, presumably because of their pre-existing affinity for Haste) that granted these two tank classes additional critical strike chance based on their avoidance. This was particularly important for Warriors, as it caused Avoidance to increase their likelihood of getting Enraged from Shield Slam, which of course meant more Rage and thus greater access to Shield Block/Barrier.

Well, with avoidance stats going the way of the Dodo, Riposte is basically getting turned around. Now, all Plate tanks will get a boost to their Parry chance based on their Crit Rating from gear. I actually suspected we might get this (though the Dodge-from-Haste doesn't seem to be coming.) Ultimately, the trick with tanks is to make sure that all the stats they get are useful in some way. Given the way the threat game has been designed (and even back when tanks had to fight pretty hard for threat,) tanks have always geared for survival first, so if there wasn't a clear survival benefit to a stat, they'd drop it.

What this does mean is that plate tanks can now directly gear for avoidance. I suspect crit is still going to be a little low on the priority list except for with Warriors, because of the established Enrage mechanic. Still, this is solid evidence that there won't be any stats that are worthless for a tank's survival.

And without dodge rating, I think they'll hopefully be able to avoid the problem of high avoidance, where bosses have to hit like freight trains in order to do enough damage to present a challenge.

Monks and Druids, however, will continue to use their stats in idiosyncratic ways, as the leather tanks have always done.