Well, Deathwish made a nice spreadsheet to answer such questions.
Here is the link, so save you searching for it: http://www.rcsolid.com/deathwing/DPSWarriorv0.483.xls

If you are a human, you want to use swords/mace, otherwise, play with the spreadsheet to see what happens. Of course the spreadsheet will not perfectly model you dps, but it is a better than guessing.

I would guess that TF should still be MH, since you get more procs that way.

Uh... correct me if I'm wrong here, but the weapon combo that does the most damage is the weapon combo that allows you the most damage. You just have to limit yourself in combat, instead of limiting your damage ex ante.

NE

The problem is that TF proc has agro on it in excess of the damage dealt. TF proc has bonus agro on it approximately equal to sunder. That means the agro generated from the proc is almost double the agro generated from equal white dps. Its similar to heroic strike in this regard. If you are hitting an agro ceiling with TF, you would be better off switching to a different weapon if the new weapon can still reach your effective dps over time (including down time not dpsing due to agro).

A bit off topic, but a question.

I'm a Paladin, and the Guild Leader of a Raiding guild with AQ20, ZG, and MC on farm, beginning to learn BWL. We haven't had any legendary drops yet. Given the tanking enhancements Paladins are getting in TBC, and my desire to tank as a paladin (go ahead, laugh!), I've kinda wanted this sword. Currently I only off tank in ZG, because of obvious warrior superiority in that department.

Question: Would I be a douchebag in wanting this sword for tanking purposes over the other warriors and Rogues?

My line of reasoning: It's a ton of aggro, mana-free. With the advent of TBC, warriors and rogues will have access to better weapons soon. Also, it is a high cost weapon, which I'm not sure there are other people in the guild who will have the funds for it (I hear whining about repair costs from a couple of our warriors already). I'm on every raid, leading it, as I haven't been able to find anyone with the stomach for leading raids, so I feel I'd be in the best position to able to actually obtain both bindings. The changes to Reckoning would seem to make it pretty nice, too.

Yet, I know the jokes will fly about a paladin guild leader getting TF over warriors and rogues. Are there paladins here with the weapon who can give me some insights? Perhaps convince me not to take it, or give reasons why I have just as much right? How much would I be gimping the raid by taking it over warriors and rogues?

Last note, my guild does love me, as they insisted I take the first Ossirian head off our first ossirian kill, as I haven't been a loot whore, heh.

Tanking gear is mix of soulforge and death bone, ony trinket and force of will, necklace off spider boss in ZG (I can get over 405 defense).

Well, when TBC first hits it will be hard to replace TF on a tanking warrior (the buffed Thunderclap helps somewhat, but not enough imo). Even comparing Kel sword drop Hungering Cold to TF, and you still can argue one is better than the other.

Some Pallys have TF already, so you would not be the first if you got it. I could understand a Pally getting it over a Rogue (when looking towards TBC), but for a Warrior, the weapon is hard to replace.

Given the drop rate, you could run MC every week for now until TBC hits and never see a Binding, or just see the same Binding over and over.

Whatever you want to do, make sure the Warriors understand beforehand your plans.

[edit] never mind sorry, image hosting screwed.

Apologies

Just for clarity, I've raided extensively on both a paladin and a warrior.

TBH, thunderfury is really a waste on a paladin. No, I'm not just saying that to fuel the class debate. You have to consider that TF is not a weapon, it's a raid tool. There are two reasons to equip it on someone - they're your main tank and the extra threat gained from proccing the hate will allow your raid to dps harder - or secondly, you want the slow debuff on hard hitting bosses so that your tank takes less damage. In the first instance you want to give it to your main tank, in the second instance you want to give it to someone who is going to be attacking a *lot* to proc the weapon as much as possible.
It just so happens that both criteria are satisfied by a main-tank warrior. However the second criterion is satisfied by dps wars and rogues too.

Considering where to put your TF is a decision about how to best employ a raid tool.

Frankly, paladins don't attack much - auto attack only, and then only when they don't have to cast some spell with a cast-time. They have no instant melee moves which can be used to increase the proc-rate. A rogue or a war will proc the debuff off revenge, HS, autoattack, MS, BT, hamstring, Sinister Strike, Evisc, etc. And both of these two classes are more or less guaranteed to be actually hitting the mob close to 100% of the time - maximising the uptime of the debuff. I don't have TF personally, but I've watched both paladins and wars using it - and the war procs it a *lot* more.


That being said, come TBC, I expect the usefulness of TF to wane - replaced by better stuff for all classes.

Short Answer: Yes

Long Answer: Look at the post above mine.

And add to that the observation, that the one paladin on our server who had TF (the first one on our server in fact, made 3 hours before mine ^^) was harassed for having one ON EVERY occasion.
If you love to get whispers like "Lol, Pala!" a lot, then go ahead ... because thats what you will be getting. It was that extreme on our server.

BTW the pala quit

regards

I would make a small argument that a DPS warrior is somewhat problematic though, since the extra threat from TF just makes their agro problems worse.

Ok, so it sounds like people feel it's mostly a prot warrior weapon, due to the aggro, which I admit I did see. The only reasons I was leaning to wanting it, is the tanking and reckoning changes in TBC, where I feel the lower dps of the weapon is fine, due to the aggro generation which is the most important to me. Double attacks for 8 seconds with this weapon seems kinda crazy to me. I realize that currently, it's better in the hands of a warrior, but I was hoping the expansion might change things(as warriors imp thunderclap will duplicate the effect). I guess we won't know until we see the gear, encounters, and final talent changes.

The only issues I have remaining, is that we had about 3 main tanks (by main, I mean they got all our inital tank gear so far). One went dps, and the other wants to, and is passing all tanking gear to the other up and coming tanks. The last tank is actually sticking to Prot, but he's not real liked by the other warriors and a few others, and we may have quite a few /gquits if he gets it. The other prot warriors we have, don't have real good gear yet. But I suppose that's an issue I have to work out with the guild; I'll talk to them about it.

Thanks for your input, guys.

Last question: Do you use the guild bank to pay for the weapon? Or do sort the wheat from the chaff by giving it to the person who can afford to upgrade it on his own? This would seem to seperate who really wants it, vs. who just wants a free legendary.

Last question: Do you use the guild bank to pay for the weapon? Or do sort the wheat from the chaff by giving it to the person who can afford to upgrade it on his own? This would seem to seperate who really wants it, vs. who just wants a free legendary.

Our guild members handled 65 transmutes free, donated 20 bars or crystals, and the remaining 80 crystals were bought by the warrior. We are a relatively young server, so the prices for crystals were between 13-20g each. Add in 15 transmutes at 5g each, and 400g in vendor mats (elemental flux) for the elementium bars, it can get costly.

It is a raid tool, and allows people to dps a lot more in fights, but to ask the guild to pay for a weapon held by one person may be tough.

/derail

I'd like to thank this board for the best source of information on Thunderfury I've found. We wouldn't have known the value of crafting this sword without the knowledge in this forum.

My old guild created 3 TF's while I was there. In all three cases, guild bank provided elementium and flux, the individual getting their TF provided arcanite (although I think 70% or so of the arcanite for each of the three TFs were given to the individual in question by guildmates, and I'm pretty sure all the xmutes in all 3 cases were done in-guild).

For the record, of those 3 TF's:

1 left the guild.
1 left the game.
1 is a DPS warrior.

/shrug

On the flip side, it's also a ton of aggro, rage-free.

I got the Elementium for mine from the guild, but got all the Arcanite Bars myself as soon as I got my second binding.

The guild leader took 3000g from the guild bank and made his elementium bars as soon as he got his first binding.

He never got his second binding.

Personally think the sword is wasted on a dps warrior. Better to give it a rogue. And ironically, i'm a dps warrior. Reason is, is because it has SOOOOO much aggro that most of the threat you're dishing out is from the proc and not from actual dmg. Pretty much a waste. The only fights you can really use the sword are patchwerk and thaddius. Even then i'd imagine it's risky on thaddius. A rogue on the other hand can feint and vanish to his hearts content while keeping the proc up consistently. That's just my 2c anyway.

And in regards to Phantom's problem, are any of your rogues consistent and a core member who will always be there? That rogue is the one that should be getting it imo since your tanks are all shady. There is nothing worse, short of a guild disband, than a TF leaving your guild for "greener pastures."

I am a self supporting MT (used to buy even flasks of titans) and I paid for the elementium for TF (the guild helped a bit also, but mainly with transmutes)...I did that in order to advance faster in MC/BWL etc, help the guild's progress.

I guess I was lucky to be a successful blacksmith (you see, I invented this concept of selling on credit, with no interest; basically I trust people to pay me back in a couple of weeks, sometimes months and I offer best prices etc. Make a friend or two in the process as well...Equipped half of alliance on my server with Arcanite reapers and heartseekers, sometimes even horde).

I love that Thunderfury, makes holding aggro so much easier, so that I can concentrate more on other areas of tanking, such as surviving etc

PS

My main is of course a warrior lol

Interesting viewpoint, with regards to going to a rogue. I'll attempt to go over our Rogues. Note that most of our Rogues are dagger-specced, with one sword specced. So not sure how much that matters.

Rogue CL - Usually there for most raids, somewhat dependable. Problem is, he tends to have to leave after Garr or Baron due to school/sleep/parental issues.

Sword rogue - played by two people. One is quiet, and follows directions well. One is obnoxious and tends to improvise on his own during raids. The character is there most of the time, and the obnoxious one hasn't done anything boneheaded for awhile, but the two people on one character kinda makes me nervous.

The rest of our dagger rogues have varying states of newness or reliability. We usually start MC at 5pm PST (we're on a PST server) with 5-6 rogues, and end up with 1-2 by the time we hit golemagg 3 hours later. School has been an issue lately, and I've been trying to recruit more steady members. Even though we have ZG, AQ20, and MC on farm, we're not really a hardcore guild. We do plan to start BWL soon, though. I don't see us hitting Naxx before the xpac, and most likely won't have done much of AQ40 by then either.

To the person who said that on the reverse, it's a ton of aggro rage-free, that is true. However, Rage doesn't seem to be an issue, as tanks can sit on nearly full bars for the majority of fights. Mana does become an issue. Of course, if Blizzard doesn't improve Paladins enough to MT in the xpac, then the point is moot.

Rage for a MT may seem infinite for non-warriors, but a lot of times it is not for a good warrior.

Did you see the changes to Pallys in TBC? The biggest change for tanking pallys is 10% of healing will go into the mana pool, so it helps somewhat with the mana issue.

There are a few more changes for tanking, but I doubt it is enough to MT a raid (good enough for 5 mans I bet).

I would not say it is impossible to DPS with the TF, it is just that DPSing with it can lead to spontaneous deaths. It serves as a great DPS weapon for the Triplets, Broodlord, TL Chromaggus and Nefarian OT/DPSing. Although I've stopped using it in Battlegrounds since everyone and thier mom loves to tell TF wielders that it's offhandable.

Kinda going off topic, maybe, but here's a short response.

The 10% sounds good, but will have to see in practice if it gives enough mana to allowed for extended tanking. Remember, a Paladin's aggro is only as good as the amount of holy damage he can dump on the target, which takes mana. Too much usage, and he runs out of mana. Too little, and he loses aggro, or the DPS has to scale back and the fight takes longer. All the while, the Paladin has significantly less life and less mitigation.

So, as you said, even in the xpac, the Prot tree is still broken. Who wants to go down a tree to tank in 5-10 mans, when you can do that just as well speccing into the other trees?

If a paladin does have TF, and can generate tons of aggro without using mana, they can spend that mana on survivability, too: healing, and able to function with less Int plate and more warrior tank gear. Very much, I see the difference of a TF as to whether a Paladin can MT now, and in the xpac.

Not questioning that the TF in the hands of a prot warrior makes them a machine, and looks to be overall better for them. Just that these thoughts led me to believe a Paladin could make good use of it as well. Ah well, maybe I should give up tanking, get a Sulfuros, and try to pretend I'm DPS. :P

Oops, think we had a miscommunication. I meant to say a Paladin's Prot tree is broken, not a warriors.

I'm a Paladin, of course I did. :P I know all about Spiritual attunement. They get 100 mana if hit with a 1000 heal spell. Or 300 from a 3000 heal spell. Only guessing at the viability at this point, with the question being: will this incoming mana be enough of a boost to allow a paladin to expend enough mana to hold as much aggro as a warrior? (or close to it, so that in the context of a raid, a Paladin functions just about as well).

Otherwise, what's the point of the Paladin Prot tree?

I'm honest here, I don't know. If I could reduce my dependancy on mana as a Tanking Paladin to extend my tanking time, I'd be all for it. I miss seal of fury :(

Heh, I'm not arguing with you on this point, because I agree. Just theorycrafting and seeking answers, of which I've gotten several. Just not the ones I wanted to hear, heh. :P