I've heard that about weaponskill being borked here. Are you sure though? because in my extensive (30-50,000 swings, but not all of those were strictly block tests) combat logs on live, "weaponskill" was only a tiny factor anyways. It would shift block rates by a few percentage pts, but stats were by far the primary factor.

Also note that on live (not sure about here) weaponskill is just an indicator number and is not used for any combat calcs.

However there are factors that are unique to the transfer of equations to Uthgard such as to only having +75 to a stat templated (instead of 101) and not having artifacts with hidden bonus chance to hit. Plus most players being lower RR. This makes for lower chances to hit. so a warrior here may only hit as often as a paladin would on live Just my two cents on the matter tho. I have very little to back that statement up as I havent played a tank here very much.

Once I get my new pally up to lvl I wanted to start making some logs for Uthgard defence rates. but I have a long ways to go till then. Thanks a lot for the input. This server may not be huge, but the people are all very helpful. I hope to some day be able to return the favor.

Not sure how it translates to here, but this formula fit to within a standard deviation of 2.4% on live.

It fit my scout and minstrel well, but for some reason my merc was blowing the predictions away. some thuoghts on that matter were the potential that on live, the defenders weaponskill has an effect on block rates. Some minstrel tests had reported that adding strength buffs did increase thier chance to block. but sadly i didnt have enough test logs with defender weaponskill.
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IF("sheildspec"=0,0,0.05+0.005*"sheildspec"+(-0.00003857*("attackerweaponskill"-1275))+(("DEX"-120/2)/3800)*((0.05+"blockmythirian")/0.05)+(IF("masteryofblocking"=0,0,IF("masteryofblocking"<4,"masteryofblocking"^2+1,IF("masteryofblocking"=4,16,23)))/100))

inputs are:
sheildspec (composite of specced skill+template+rr bonus)
attacker weaponskill (on live a good estimate was about 1600 if you didnt know)
DEX (defender dex stat)
blockmythirian (N/A on this server)
mastery of blocking (level of mastery of blocking e.g. 1 to 5)

but the details dont matter much. as you can see the attacker weaponskill factor is very small.

Weaponskill doesnt influence every defense skill - thats a fact I think... there is a topic somewhere on the Forum - unfortunately tests about that seem to be very difficult.