I do not know if you know this or not, but it is not all the same wether you thwart an attack with your defense or with blocking.
If your defense stops an attack, it has absolutelly no effect on you: you go along as if nothing happened. If, however, they got through your defense, and you block an attack, the "block" action will overwrite your chosen action. This means, that you block INSTEAD of attacking (very noticable for Inferno sorceresses, I think the other one has noted it too ;)).
So the way it works:
If your defense stops an attack, it has absolutelly no effect on you: you go along as if nothing happened. If, however, they got through your defense, and you block an attack, the "block" action will overwrite your chosen action. This means, that you block INSTEAD of attacking (very noticable for Inferno sorceresses, I think the other one has noted it too ;)).
So the way it works:
- The attackers attack rating and level, and the defenders defense rating and level will determine wether the defeneder had been hit or not
<>
- IF the above indicates that the defender had been hit THEN the defender's chance to block will determine wether (s)he successfully blocked or not<>
[st]This means, that the OVERALL chance that a SINGLE attack will hit you indeed depends multiplicatively on your "chance to hit" and "chance to block", but you need to decide about the high/low defense in light of the character build.
On a side note: does anyone know how EXACTLY the faster block works in 1.10? It was said that block lock was eliminated, but it FEELS (haing performed a significant number of LL-duel tests on the issue) that while your character seems swinging on YOUR client it actually does not swing - although you can walk away unlike as in the case of block-lock before). So to me it FEELS as if they'd only made the "walk away" action uninterruptable by block, but other actions still get overwritten by it. Anyone of you smart people has more accurate data on this issue?