Weaponskill, Defense and you

[Tanitha]

I have no problems admitting that I'm a newcomer. Every day in World of Warcraft teaches me something new and that's cool, because it means I'm just that little bit better. Or, when questing in STV a little bit bitter, but I think it's only ?? undead Rogues that walk away from STV with a smile on their face. To the ones that chain kill me I'd say rot in hell, but they'd probably enjoy that anyway.

But onto the main question.

Harsgalt has been discussing builds with me over PM. Or maybe more accurately, picking apart some of the builds this noob has used as I level up. He's made interesting suggestions, so I want to query some of my decisions to decide if I'm changing to go with his suggestions. My Paladin is training in the Protection tree and I've put points in Anticipation (+10 Defense skill) and into (eventually) Weapon Expertise for the bump in weapon skill.

Now as I understand from what I have researched the bonus defense gives you a higher chance of blocking, parrying and dodging as well as reducing the crit % an opponent has against you. On the one hand this seems like a bad thing, because Reckoning and Redoubt require you to take damage before proccing. On the other hand - damage avoided and crits reduced seems like it should be a requirement.

Working with the 5/level formula, the +10 Defense means you have the defensive ability of a character equal to [your level]+2. The first question then is:

Originally Posted by Question1

Is +Defense for a Protection built Paladin a good thing to go for, both in early leveling and through to end-game? Why?

In terms of weapon skill, I have noticed that when I have my skills maxed (One-handed maces and one-handed axes for this example) when using roughly comparable weapons the +5 weaponskill as a human for maces seem to make a reasonable difference. I do not know the theorycraft for it, but it appears to cause more damage. In this respect the +10 for Weapon Expertise will give you +15 (3 levels worth of) bonus weaponskill.

Originally Posted by Question2

Is bonus weaponskill worth it? What are the in-game effects of it?

Those are the two basics. I just want to get a better understanding of how +Defense and +Weaponskill affect a basically auto-attacking melee class and if they are worth building on.

Thank you in advance!

Edit:
Harsgalt's suggested build here.
The build I'm aiming for here.

[Stigg]

Weaponskill also determines your chance to hit (and hit well for that matter).

If at level 60 you go learna new weapon and attemp to hit a level 30 mob, there is a good chance it will miss. Similar to other skills, weapon skill (liek you said) scales by 5 for level.....so having a weapon skill of 150 for a level 30 mob is optimal (and above 150 is of course....more optimal??) Lets say you have a weapon skill of 150. You are fighting a mob that is level 34. The optimum weapon skill for that mob would then be 170 (34x5). Since you are only at level 150, you have a decent chance to miss the target all together or get "Glancing Blows" which are attcks that only do a portion of the intended damage.

+ Weaponskill becomes hugely valuable when you reach towards endgame battles. Fighting mobs that are ?? means you WILL miss. But, if you have a weapon skill of 315, 330, etc. you will miss less. For normal leveling, it (in my opinion) is not nearly as important as other stats, as you probably won't be facing too many encounters with mobs that are THAT much higher than you. Maybe this is different for paladins.

Defense: I will admit I really don't know that much about it. BUT, similar to the above post, it does scale 5 per level, and the more of it you have, the greater your damage reduction will be.

From a sticky in the Statistics and Formula section:

Increases the chance of being missed by an attack.

Increases the chance to dodge, parry, and block.

Decreases the chance of being affected by a critical hit.

Decreases the chance of being affected by a "crushing blow". Creatures that are higher level than your character can land crushing blows that deal increased melee damage. The chance of a crushing blow increases as the level difference between you and the opposing creature increases. Players never deal "crushing blows", only creatures.


SOURCE - Along with info on many other skills

[Clavina]

I'm not too familiar with paladins as I'm a hordie to the bone! However as a rule of thumb i would recommend staying away from any tree called 'Holy', 'Protection' or 'Restoration' when trying to level a character.

In a nutshell more weaponskill and more defense will allow you to attack (and survive against) mobs more easily. More weaponskill will mean more hits and less misses. More defense will mean more dodges/blocks/parries and also less critical hits against you.

In the new character screen options you can see the effect that defense has on your parry/dodge/block skills. If you equip an item that has +defense on it all three stats will change accordingly.

[Karkas]

I noticed that since the 2.0 patch you can now get quite a lot of these statistics from the character screen. If you select "melee" or "defense" in the dropdown box and hover your mouse over the different statistics you can see what the effect of most stats on your character is. Quite informative since by just equiping some items you can see the effect on your AP, dps and damage mitigation directly.

edit: ah I see Clavina already mentioned this, apologies

[Tanitha]

No, that's quite useful. Is the information accurate? I've been looking at it but most fo the numbers are 0.0 for me, even when equipping something that *should* change it. Admittedly, I haven't checked them since patch 2.0.3. Or of course, I have nothing that would change it

[Karkas]

I tried it with my warrior yesterday and after the attack power increasing shout it correctly displayed the increased AP and the effect on damage this has.

Also the damage mitigation for armor rating seemed to be working fine.

But you put your finger on the nice problem here, you cannot see any change without actually equiping the item which for BoE's gives you the results a bit late: "Ah, this item is actually worse than the one I am using currently. Too bad I can only vendor sell it now"

It might be able to see the effect of a lower defense skill or weapon skill if you check the screen just after you levelled so it didn't reach the "normal" value for that level yet (which would result in the zeros you see I presume)

There might also be some kind of mod available to see the changes you would get by equiping a certain item instead of the current item you have equipped. Wouldn't know what that was though.

[Felix Niebuhr]

You really shouldn`t bother too much with increasing defense through talents. Its only needed in the endgame boss encounters, and is at that point easilly obtained from gear. When soloing, your approach should be: The quicker I kill it, the less damage I will take. In groups where you got a healer, he wouldn`t know if you had the protection points or not, from having to heal you. So its moot at this point in char level, because you can do a splendid job without it.

Generally, + to weapon skill is only usefull when fighting mobs above your level, mobs at your level or below you will do just as well against. Or rather, you really have to bring forth the math and the statistics to se an improvement, you won`t be able to notice it ingame. + def from gear is worth keeping, as you level up, and to equip if you are going to tank in a group. The reason for this being that you can stack quite a bit of +defence, and it begins to matter. But still only in situations where you have others killing for you. To sum it up, dont get def from talents, thats way too expensive. From gear its usefull in certain situations.