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WotLK Tanking Weapons: Redux
Thorgred's observation about Hammer of the Righteous - that its threat is pretty stinkin' low - over in the Protection Paladin thread got me to thinking about our tanking weapon selection again. Specifically, that if the threat the skill offers is so low, is it really worth it to switch over to a physical damage weapon?
Let's pretend we have two identical ilvl weapons: one is a 2.6 speed physical weapon with 107.9 DPS, one is a 2.6 speed spell damage weapon with 39.0 DPS and 266 spell damage. Assume that the other stats are identical for the sake of simplicity. (These are pretty similar to level 70 Brutal Gladiator weapons, if you were wondering.)
Pop those into ye olde threate calculator without changing anything from the default settings, and you get the following results:
Let's pretend we have two identical ilvl weapons: one is a 2.6 speed physical weapon with 107.9 DPS, one is a 2.6 speed spell damage weapon with 39.0 DPS and 266 spell damage. Assume that the other stats are identical for the sake of simplicity. (These are pretty similar to level 70 Brutal Gladiator weapons, if you were wondering.)
Pop those into ye olde threate calculator without changing anything from the default settings, and you get the following results:
Physical damage weapon: 1483.81 TPSJust for the sake of checking scaling factors, turn on all the buffs and you'll get these results:
Spell damage weapon: 1546.28 TPS
Physical damage weapon: 3882.86 TPSIt looks to me like we may have been wrong about wanting physical damage weapons come expansion time. Unless there is some monstrous divide between the stats on physical and caster weapons - which very well may be the case - then I guess a little less was changing than we thought.
Spell damage weapon: 3942.76 TPS
Total Comments 4
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It's also interesting to note that around 1.8 to 1.9 speed caster weapons appear to intersect almost perfectly with very slow physical weapons, assuming that scaling factors remain constant. If caster weapons end up any slower in WotLK, they'll be clearly superior. If they're any faster, they'll be a little worse.
I guess it'll all come down to itemization. |
 
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It seems like Hammer of the Righteous needs to be tweaked to favor higher dps weapons, so that Prot Warriors/Paladins and DW Death Knights will use similar weapons.
I see that fast weapons are preferred, similar to Warriors. |
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Yo,
Your default sheet has HotR and ShoR Threat modifier set at 100%, while I thought just a blag entry ago you decided they were at 120%. Anyways, calculating the baselines with the new modifiers I get a number like: 1575.26 Physical 1626.38 Spell And for giggles, turning off the armor gives you: 1623.25 Physical 1653.71 Spell Now, also consider that there will be other stats on physical weapons that might boost threat. For instance, Brutal Gladiator's Slicer has AP, Hit, Crit, Armor Pen and Stam, while the spellblade has sta, int, and hit only. Taking those into consideration you have: Wait, fuck your sheet. You can't edit things like crit, hit, armor pen. These are things that would benefit a physical weapon, but not a spell damage weapon. Anyways, to me it looks more like, all things considered, physical weapons and spell damage weapons are very close, with spell damage pulling ahead in the typical scenario. However, in situations where you might be using a seal like wisdom for some period of time, or a number of other factors. If I had a laptop with me next week I would break your sheet and make it work with other seals, just to see how that would pan out. Because things like SoB would gain more benefit from spell damage, but I don't know if it's terrible modeled with the current topend tank gear or not. I will probably end up getting both types of weapon. I expect to have a physical weapon as a "Mitigation Weapon" and then have a caster weapon because I'm a paladin and I heal sometimes. I will probably use the Physical weapon on heavy bosses and caster weapon on trash clears. And really, that seems to fit for me. It's what I do already for shields. |
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Maybe I'll spend my free time tomorrow refining the model to include things like crit, hit rating, and so on.
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Recent Blog Entries by Theras
- WotLK Tanking Weapons: Redux (08/12/08)
- Sheath of Light for Tanking? (08/11/08)
- 'Sheathbot' is this week's Worst Word of the Week (08/06/08)
- WotLK: Ridiculous Threat, or Terrible Excel Skills? (08/05/08)
- Speed Pulling Black Temple (07/27/08)
