I'm curious why there aren't any mele weapons available (yes, there are a few off-hands and daggers, but those are irrelevant in terms of DPS upgrades) in Sunwell.

Is Blizzard doing this on purpose and holding off on weapons to be used as main-hand or 2H until the season 4 gear is out to prevent some sort of arena imbalance?

Warglaive of Azzinoth

Warglaive of Azzinoth

maybe ? The 2 Piece seems irreplaceable on brut/kil'jaedon I would imagine.

There's plenty of melee weapons....just none that MATTER.

Mannaroth's Grip and mounting vengeance are decent off-hand for rogues and enhancement/fury respectively.

There's a semi-tanking, semi-rogue one-hander off of Kalgecos.

And about 3 daggers scattered around.

Unless there is a really nice main-hand or one-hand fist/sword/axe/mace off of all of the later bosses that we just don't know about, Blizz is really being stupid with the itemization.

Muramasa is really the only worthwhile MH upgrade aside from Glaives. Unfortunately, we dont know what drops it (Muru or Kil'Jaeden are good ideas since no one has killed them). Yes there are a few weapons that do drop in Sunwell, but their stat allocation isnt desirable, and they arent large enough upgrades to be meaningful.

Caster weapon itemisation is also horrible. The only real upgrade is Sunflare (unconfirmed Kil'jaeden loot). Grand Magisters Staff of Torrents is merely a sidegrade and warlocks can't use maces so...guess it's S4 weapon again for me.

Hunters and dps casters have a pair of ilvl 151 weapons already; other classes using ilvl 141 stuff are going to find more of an upgrade. It's no different than [Nathrezim Mindblade] being good well into t5 content.

The Torrrent staff isn't going to rock your world, coming from Illidan/Archimonde loot, but I wouldn't call it a sidegrade.

Its a downgrade if you are hit capped, but better than sunflare if you can use all the hit..

Enhancement Shaman do not have ilvl 151 weapons.

Also, every class does not have optimal ilvl 151 weapons (excluding Legendaries). Rogues for example, are left using lvl 141 (or 146 if they PVP). Same goes for Fury Warriors.

Count the number of weapon drops from early bosses in the T4, T5 and T6 zones. Compare this number to the weapons dropped by Prince, Vashj, Kael, Archimonde, and Illidan. See a pattern emerge. Stop posting here until the zone is cleared.

Hopefully Kil'Jaeden drops a main hand axe/mace/fist enhance shaman can use because of all those you listed the only one that drops anything for us is Prince.

The man is making a general statement to the OP otherwise I would think quotes would be in his post RE: Karakas.

I think it has more to do with the size of the instance and number of bosses. They barely managed to get all the proper armor sets in there, let alone the weapons to go with them all.

But Muru/Kil'Jaeden were not killed on PTR, perhaps they have some weaponry to look forward to. =/

Well the best hunter melee weapons pre sunwell (and arguably through much of sunwell, depending on your stats in other slots) are iLvl 132 from a 10 man . Very reminiscent of the ZA 1h situation pre-TBC. The best ranged weapon pre-Twins is an iLvl 146 from a badge vendor.

So yes, Blizzard makes strange weapon upgrade cycles. Although IIRC it's not unusual for there to only be significant upgrades to swords every other tier, is it? Large jump for Dal'rends to Brutality Blade, moderate jumps through Vis'kag and CTS to AQR. Then nothing in Naxx until Gressil right at the end, which was a huge jump. Medium jump to Kara, nothing in Gruul/Mags, big jump in SSC, nothing in TK, small jump in Hyjal, nothing in BT until huge jump off Illidan.

[Stanchion of Primal Instinct] is a tanking staff. That 75 Agi is 5.1% dodge, and when enchanted, that staff alone will grant ~7.5% dodge. If you look at the other feral gear in Sunwell, it's also following the Armor pen trend. Armor pen = more damage (and thus more threat) from white dmg, Mangle, Maul and Swipe. My ideal setup from Sunwell gear has just over 1k Armor pen on it.

The lost armor is trivial because you can reach the cap without it, and the 46 stam loss, while not ideal, is more than made up for by the extra avoidance.

Because that Sunwell Radiance buff just isn't there anymore now is it?

And...?

Because avoidance scales non-linearly, the Sunwell Radiance buff reduces its effectiveness, but it by no means eliminates it. Avoidance stacking is still very much discussed (and used successfully) for Brutallus.

(That said, Stanchion is obviously a DPS item. The strength and ArP are clues.)

My point was that the item spends more of its budget on DPS stats than it does on tanking stats. I believe most druids would say that their threat is quite fine (and is, in fact, generally better than that of warriors) and if it isn't they can swap in more DPS-ish pieces to improve it, but they would like a tanking-itemized item that is a clear mitigation improvement over a t5 drop.

Those items, like all of the druid tier sets before them, are clearly intended for both DPS and tanking. Weapons can be swapped in combat though so more focused itemization is preferable in that slot.

Perhaps it's intentional. Druids have 3 specs, but really can cover 4 classes. No other class can do this. Maybe they don't want to make the perfect feral tanking set because they believe that feral should mean cat + bear. Not, just bear.

huh?

If there are some weapon upgrades, wouldn't we already know about them from data mining the data files?

No, because loot isn't in the data files. The only way to mine for loot is via linking itemids and hoping that the item has been spawned and is therefore not going to DC you.

That is because Blizzard doesn't know how to itemize, not because armor pen is "good for tanking." The itemization team (person?) has a one-track when it comes to new stats (ie: spell pen on AQ40 gear, the same patch where spell pen was made useless in PVE, haste on warrior tanking gear).

The armor penetration is on those items because Blizzard doesn't have a clue, or wants to generate substandard itemisation on purpose. Considering the Sunwell Radiance aura and it's implied "we had no idea...", I'd say it's a combination of both, weighed on the latter.

And the stanchion is a dps staff. You can reach armor cap without the 2½k armor from WGS/PoF? I'd rather use WGS or PoF and wear some "rogue" items elsewhere in my kit for real TPS stats like expertise and hit.