World Of Warcraft: Daze Mechanic Finally Explained

Since the release of the game I and many other players have pondered the difference between "daze" and the bevy of other movement-impairing effects that can be removed by abilities such as Blessing of Freedom. It's been stated before that daze isn't considered a movement-impairing effect in the traditional sense and isn't trigged by a specific ability (unless it carries a daze effect, such as Shield Bash). Well Drysc recently piped up about exactly how daze works in this post:

The chance to be dazed is determined by the character's base defense rating as compared to the mobs level, or technically the defense of the character versus the attack skill of the mob (which is always maxed at [5 x mob level]). A level 70 mob would have an attack of 350 as compared to a level 70's character defense of 350. The base chance is 20% and this lowers or raises based on the difference between player defense and mob attack, to a minimum of 0% chance, or maximum of 40% chance.

Later in the post he confirms the popular understanding that you can only be dazed when struck from behind, which anybody who's spent time fleeing from a large group of gnolls has experienced first hand.