Using a 'Mitigation' Weapon

At this stage in the game, most of us get a good laugh at the almost assuredly awful Protection Paladins who run around using Warrior tanking weapons. They're usually the type that can only do Slave Pens and the Mechanar – but not Nethermancer Sepethrea, because she's "hard". We cringe when we join a group on our alts and we get one of them, because it invariably means that your connection is going to "drop" before the first boss, or that the police are at your door and you have to leave.

The reason it's a terrible idea is because high front-loaded threat is a cornerstone of Paladin tanking, and spell damage is the only meaningful way to improve that metric. And the best source of spell damage available is a solid caster weapon. Unfortunately that leaves us down a slot on avoidance or mitigation compared to a Warrior or Druid, but that's just the way we work so we have to accept it. However, some Paladins contend that using a Warrior weapon is appropriate under limited conditions: specifically, when threat is less of a factor (or not a factor at all), it is appropriate to swap in low threat/high mitigation pieces, including your weapon.

Let's explore some of those situations:

Hard-hitting bosses

I see this thrown around a lot by some wet behind the ears Paladins: the mitigation weapon comes out on highly tank-centric bosses, like Prince Malchezaar, Gruul the Dragonkiller, or Halazzi. Squeaking out an extra 200 armor or an extra 1% to dodge looks great on paper when tanking a boss that has a very real chance to smoke you, but swapping out your spell damage weapon remains a very bad idea. Eviscerating your threat generation by anywhere from 20% and up may sound like an easy problem to solve – the DPS can watch their aggro, duh! – it hurts you far more than it helps. The faster the fight ends, the less damage you will take, and the less opportunities there will be for you to be killed by a 'perfect storm' of avoidance failure.

A common counter-argument often includes anecdotes about having double the threat of the DPS, which ties into argument two...

Threat lead

This argument takes two different but similar faces:

a) "I tank just fine with a Warrior weapon and nobody ever pulls aggro."
b) "I use my spell damage weapon until I get a threat lead, then I switch to my Warrior weapon."

This is an absolutely valid argument if, and only if, you're in an entry level group or raid, and it is comprised entirely of sub-par players (be it through skill, gear, knowledge, or any combination thereof). This does not work for playing with the grown-ups. The hallmark of a good damage dealer is the ability to pull aggro off an equally geared tank at will, but the skill to never do it. Unless some sort of mechanic is present that causes the target to fixate on only the tank, your DPS should be pressing you to the limits of your maximum threat generation when you're lead tanking.

Unless, of course, you aren't lead tanking...

Off-tanking

Things change dramatically when you're not the main tank. Depending on the situation using a Warrior weapon can be a great idea, especially in very large pulls. For example, if you are last on a list of three tanks, you will often have adequate time to build sufficient threat on your target even if you are engaging in some bare fist brawling. It can also be great on bosses that have adds that you don't intend to kill or crowd control, like some of the Moroes adds (in the absence of a Priest), or while controlling Veras Darkshadow in the Illidari Council encounter (especially if he gets Blessing of Spell Warding).

It can also be a not-so-great idea if you're tanking AE pulls. It may not be a boss, and it may not require a large amount of threat on any one target, but the spell damage you lose from your weapon is an even larger chunk of your threat when Consecration is the only thing holding them back from crushing some Warlocks. And as hilarious as crushing Warlocks can be, it's still bad.

It's worth pointing out here that it may seem like you're off-tanking The Curator for a bulk of the encounter, but it's still ill-advised to use anything but a spell damage weapon. During its Evocation it takes 200% bonus damage, and you'll find that your threat lead you built up while "off-tanking" rapidly evaporates. If you do insist on using a Warrior weapon, at least switch to your real weapon during the Evocation.

And there are some other strange situations that haven't been covered yet, either...

Other odd circumstances

There are some bizarre times where you would be crazy to not use a Warrior weapon while tanking. They usually include times where the boss has a fixate ability: that is, they never change targets based on aggro, but have some other target selection mechanic. Tanking Netherspite is a great example that's familiar to almost all of us, since you cannot lose aggro while affected by the red portal. Tanking in Phase 1 of the Reliquary of Souls encounter is another situation where you cannot lose aggro, and squeaking out some additional avoidance is invaluable for surviving the period between Enrages.

Any target that is magic immune – or can temporarily become magic immune – is also a prime candidate for using a Warrior weapon, though I would question the wisdom of selecting a Paladin to tank something they really have no business tanking. Veras Darkshadow, as mentioned above, is one of the few bosses that would fall under this category.

Conclusion

While worthless for general purpose tanking, having a Warrior weapon on hand for those rare occurrences where your threat generation is marginalized or negated entirely can be incredibly useful. Is it a required component to a Protection Paladin kit? Probably not. But for those of us who are fond of min-maxing (and who here at Elitist Jerks isn't?), you'll never leave home without one.

(In your bag. Please.)