Q: How do blocking and parrying work?
A: Both of these skills use dexterity, and the quality of your shield/weapon, to create a numerical value. That value is compared to your opponent�s weapon skill value to determine your chances to block or parry. If the numbers are equal, your base chance is determined entirely by your skill level. Also, before this comparison happens, the game looks to see if your opponent is in your forward arc � to determine that arc, make a 120 degree angle, and put yourself at the point.
Dual wielders throw an extra wrinkle in. You have half the chance of shield blocking a dual wielder as you do a player using only one weapon. Your chance to parry is halved if you are facing a two handed weapon, as opposed to a one handed weapon.
If you have multiple attackers, your chance to parry any one attack (which is determined in part by your skill in parry) will be divided by the number of attackers. Blocking is a little different � your chances of blocking multiple opponents partly depends on the size of your shield. (One opponent for small, two for medium, three for large.) You will have no chance to shield block any more than that number in any given round of combat.
So what did we do in 1.52 to increase your chances of blocking or parrying? Well, before this patch, the game was artificially inflating the number of opponents. (For instance, if you were being attacked by one person, the game was counting that player AND his groupmates as opponents against you, even if that guy�s group was nowhere nearby. There were other factors as well, but that was the biggest problem right there.) So for blocking, if one guy was swinging at you, but he was grouped with four people, the game would decide you had five attackers, and your small shield might �block� someone who wasn�t actually hitting you. And for parrying, obviously the division mentioned above would be a much smaller number. Now, the game is only counting people who are actively trying to cause you harm.
But you will never block or parry in RVR as much as you do in PVE, because in RVR you�re almost always facing multiple opponents, and as you can see from the above explanation, the chances to block or parry are directly related to the number of attackers. The change we made in patch 1.52 is most noticeable in one group vs. one group battles, but certainly has an impact in epic scale RVR.o