World of Warcraft is a big, dense, complicated game with a lot of little instances of utter nonsense—you get that sort of thing when you’re two decades old with over a dozen expansions. But this one has to be the funniest quirk I’ve seen out of the MMO in a while. Turns out, if you’re a Protection Warrior, you’ve got a shield tax.
That’s per user Kersplode on the game’s subreddit, who took a whopping 20,000-strong sample of damage instances to test their theory that they were paying more in repair costs.
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As in, 3.5% of 42 silver is 1.47—if you block 100 times, and lose the mathematically probable 3.5 points of durability you’d tank in that scenario, you’ll be paying 147 silver. Which, over the course of 100 blocks (dividing 147 by 100) is 1.47 per block. It all checks out.
The issue with Shield Block (the ability) isn’t that it increases the chance you have to lose durability, but rather your frequency of blocked attacks—Kersplode, for instance, passively blocks around 35% of attacks. Increasing that to 100% for six seconds multiple times over the course of a dungeon means more blocked attacks overall, leading to higher repair costs.
“3,600 incoming attacks … I would normally block [around] 35% of those attacks, which is going to cost me 18 gold, 90 silver. If I press Shield Block, I am going to block [around] 81% of those attacks instead, which would cost me 43 gold, 74 silver.”
Now, granted, 25 gold is pocket change in retail WoW. I’m actually pretty skint on my Outlaw Rogue, and I still have around 15,000 gold. But that’s per dungeon. Let’s say you have a normal gaming habit and a job and you push an average of… I dunno, 30 dungeons in a week—a handful on weeknights and bigger gaming sessions on the weekend.
That’s 750 gold a week. Over a month, that’s 3,000 extra gold. Over the course of a season, which last five to six months, that’s a 15,000 gold tax, which… okay, actually still isn’t that much—it’s the equivalent to a gem or a pricey crafting mat for an item you might need—but it’s the principle of the thing! The principle!
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