• Gid

Since this change to Thunderfury in the recent patch:

I have been thinking about when I may replace it as my main tanking weapon and if so what I could replace it with. In the last few weeks I have picked up two possibilities:

The Sun Eater
King's Defender

There has been plenty of discussion about the theoretical threat generation of Thunderfury but I was wondering what tanks favoured using in practice and why? Because it is such an old weapon the tanking stats of other weapons (AC, stamina, +def and so on) are starting to look impressive in comparison and with the ability to spec improved thunderclap for an equivalent slow that is usable from defensive stance the argument for the proc is weaker as well.

Has anyone done research into this? Taking a quick look through the EU and US armory at the main tanks from various guilds making good progress in 25 man raiding saw a mixture of TF, King's Defender and one or two Sun Eaters all with mongoose or agility enchants. However it's hard to know if tanks are using other weapons only because they never completed a TF.

Which brings me onto my second point. Which is the most effective tanking enchant? I had always sworn by +15 agility but people keep talking about how often mongoose procs and it's hard to argue with +120 agility and a bit of haste even if it's not up 100% of the time. I've currently gathered the materials for mongoose but I don't want to commit with such an expensive enchant until I've decided which weapon to go for.

Does anyone have some experience they are willing to share on this subject?

 

Bardus

Threat generation isn't always the priority of tanking. There are many encounters/situations where maximizing your mitigation/survivability (tankpoints) is more important than your threat generation.

Sun Eater is the highest tankpoints scored weapon currently in the game.
2nd is Grom'tor's Charge (while it's only 67.2dps it's 30 stam, 11 defense and 7 agility add a LOT of survivability).
Kings Defender is only fractionally lower than Grom'tor's Charge.

Raw threat generation becomes quiet tricky when comparing TF to a non proc based weapon.
Clearly more DPS = more threat. Faster weapons allow more heroic strikes, slower weapons generate more threat with devastate.

Thunderfury is a 53.9 dps weapon with a proc that add approximately 30dps of armor ignoring damage. The debuff on a single target also adds approximately 20-30 unadjusted threat (from some very rough tests I conducted) that's still effectively 4-6 dps worth of white swing threat bringing TF's single target threat generation up around the equivalent of an 88-90 dps weapon.

Note also however that TF only generates rage as a 54 dps weapon.

IMO Blazefury at 95 dps should surpass TH's threat generation.
At 88 dps I'd expect Blazeguard should be very close to TF on threat generation, and may surpass it with the additional rage from white swings to spend.

I'd expect TF to outperform Kings Defender and Sun Eater on single target threat generation.

I currently have a TF and a Fireguard, however I only just picked up Blacksmithing so haven't done significant testing with the Fireguard. From the Heroics I ran today it seems like TF is still slightly better for single target threat generation than my 81.2 dps Fireguard.

 

◊ Kurisu

Isnt this thread going to be a rehashed up version of MT Itemization thread and the MT enchant thread mixed together?

[Warrior] Level 70 Tanking Enchants
[Warrior] MT itemization theory