My take on Chill of the Throne
So, finally I’m getting down to write something worthwhile again. 
With the recent announcement made that icecrown citadel will feature a zone-wide debuff called Chill of the Throne, that reduces all player’s dodge chance by 20% (after DR), players left and right have made exclaims how bad, unimaginative and whatnot it is.
I don’t agree with this a single bit. And luckily many folks over at TankSpot or ElitistJerks do neither.
I, for one, have always been someone to value EH far more than avoidance. I don’t think that avoidance is unimportant, but as a tank you first priority is to be as healable as possible. Damage spikes just don’t take a ride on that boat in my book.
Another thing that bugs me is that many seem to believe that this debuff will hurt druids and, to some extent, death knights more than warriors or paladins. In fact, we are more or less on equal footing here.
Let’s face the fact that no tank that is ready for Icecrown Citadel will sport less than 20% dodge after DR. So every tank will lose exactly 20% avoidance.
Let’s assume we have a boss that will attempt to hit you 100 times during the encounter. Each hit will maim you for 10k damage ignoring any means of mitigation.
Now, we have 2 tanks, me as a feral druid, having 40% dodge and a protection warrior having 30% dodge and 30% parry.
Without Chill of the Throne:
- Feral druid
100 attacks * 40% avoidance = 60 hits
60 hits * 10k damage = 600k damage total - Protection warrior
100 attacks * 60% avoidance = 40 hits
40 hits * 10k damage = 400k damage total
With Chill of the Throne
- Feral Druid
100 attacks * 20% avoidance = 80 hits
80 hits * 10k damage = 800k damage total - Protection Warrior
100 attacks * 40% avoidance = 60 hits
60 hits * 10k damage = 600k damage total
After digging through this heap of deeply scientific mathematics, you can clearly see that Chill of the Throne increases the incoming damage by an equal amount for both tanks.
If you factor in mitigation, you will notice that there will be slight differences, but those have always been there and are not tied to Chill of the Throne.
I firmly believe the development team behind World of Warcraft is doing a good, even great, job to make this game fun, entertaining and challenging for as many players as possible.
If the manage to make encounters less spike-heavy and random this will go a long way to make the life of healers more fun and less spammy.
I’m looking forward to tank in Icecrown Citadel. 
