@Legedi: If you have anyone at all threat capped in the raid, you should really consider using WF. The additional threat it generates is not insignificant.

Well by using some very rough "math", lets deduct the swordspecc addition of the equation with daggerspecc, basically boiling it down to the fact that ss gives more proccs than bs. Also assuming that the white dps from WF in daggers vs swords is equal with equal weaps.

If these assumptions are true, i find it hard to accept that swords have "that much"(whatever that is) more benefit from wf than daggers.

In one minute its possible to do 60/4=15 sinister strikes, the same timespan allows 10 backstabs. So the 5 extra special attacks have 20% to procc a wf, giving 1 extra attack pr minute for ss builds...

There has to be something more to it, or the general idea of wf4swords>wf4daggers is wrong, or its just the sum of a number of small sword benefits that eventually add up to "much more benefit" from wf... I dont know...

Edit: Ofc the ss proccs by swords also hit with sword dmg range, while not being "normalized *" by attackspeed(unlike the white proccs), while bs proccs hit with dagger damage range.

This might be it, as the greater number of ss-proccs also have the bigger dmg range giving a double benefit...

*Normalization in the second last paragraph refer to the wf benefit on white attacks where daggers have weaker but more proccs. Not weapon speed.

Imp. Windfury totem gives an AP bonus to the Windfury procs, Exog, which translates into more damage to a sword than to a dagger. Thanks, attack speed!

More benefit per hit, yes, but due to daggers hitting more often, thus allowing WF to proc more often, it evens out (for auto-attack.) The only difference is you're going to get 50% more procs from specials, and additional procs from MH and OH SS procs.

You are going to get more procs, yes, but they will also be bigger. This is the major point, white damage wf gains are basically the same, but swords gives more yellow attacks and a bigger damage range leading to more and bigger wf procs from the yellow component. Thats why swords gain more than daggers.

I was wondering if anyone takes bloodlust in to account or if you make this order based solely on totem buffs? Well it's clear that Windfury and SoE will do much more for your melee dps then WoA will do for caster it's equally clear that mages are one of the few classes who get a straight 30% dps buff from bloodlust. All melee classes fall pretty far short when it comes to bloodlust effectiveness. For us a resto shammy is more likely to get in a 3x mage, shadow priest group then a melee dps both for the mana regen on the shammy and for the increased bloodlust effectiveness.

You can always switch their group mid-fight for a bloodlust on the casters.

0 WF5
1.5 GoA3
10 WF5
11.15 GoA3
20 WF5
21.15 GoA3
30 WF5
31.15 GoA3
40 WF5
41.15 GoA3
50 WF5
51.15 GoA3
= 6 WF5, 6 GoA3 Totems

For a 19/42/0 build, it's
3810 mana used per minute, and it's very questionable if you don't want shocking all the time on this shock related build.
For a 0/42/19 build, it's 2858 mana used per minute, that's not much more than half a mana potion, leaving you a lot mana to spend on shocking and stormstrikes.
For a 0/45/16 build, it's
2629 mana used per minute, that's even less mana needed, and more mana saved while spamming shocks and stromstrike from the mental quickness talent.

Grace of Air talentated (+88 agi) provides:

02.20% crit 88 ap for a rogues
03.52% crit 88 ap for a (cat) druid
02.20% crit 88 ap for a hunter
02.64% crit 00 ap for a warrior
03.52% crit 00 ap for a shaman

Please take into account, there might be other buffs (blessig of kings) and talents (rogue: vitality, hunter: lightning reflexes, druid: survival of the fittest), those make GoA even stronger.

Question- And I'm not trying to spread the myth of SoE+GoA+Flametongue being highest DPS. Basically, I raid with a pally tank, so this actually interests me quite a bit. I know searing totem scales with +damage, and I know flametongue scales with + damage... does flametongue totem? Basically, which would net the tankadin more threat, WF or WoA+FT?

EDIT: I apologize, I know this is slightly off-topic as the OP was concerning melee DPS totem choice, but I didn't think the question warranted it's own thread and it seemed to make the most sense in this thread out of the others already started.

WoA, but not for the FT purposes, his styles benefits from spelldamage and his whitedamage is uninteresting. Just think about it, allmost all tankadins use a 41 dps weapon with spelldamage, there shouldn't be any noticable threat gains from wf.

An enhancer + a tankadin, what else to fill the group? Rogues? Ferals? You will want lotp and bs, leaving only 1 spot for a rogue. The tankadin should get a resto shaman and leave you to those whose job is it to deal damage, not tanking.

Like I said, this is more a tank group than a DPS group, and he's currently using Thunderfury instead of one of the spell damage swords (except for one of the AoE pulls like the dragonhawk hatchlings in The Eye), and I'm actually elemental. Normally it's Tankadin, Elemental Shaman, Tree Druid (to help negate the base HP difference between warrior/paladin), Warlock, and the last spot shifts between SP and a second Paladin (ret aura) depending on raid balance.

I realize white damage is unimpressive from a Paladin (I ridicule him mercilessly about it), but WF gives the 20% more righteousness hits, which get 190% threat due to RF. I've been working in excel all day and my brain's broken, so I was hoping someone might have a handy-dandy ready-made link I could browse that I just wasn't able to find.

Windfury >> anything else for threat

If you need more mitigation then GoA obviously, but speaking from experience there is a massive threat gain from having windfury as a prot paladin.

Can you provide some math behind that statement? Personally i higly doubt that paladin tank with caster weapon will gain more from wf totem than from wrath of air.

I've been reading up extensively on windfury recently as there seems to be some debate among our officers (mainly the hunter CL and myself, the rogue CL). Our only regularly attending DPS warrior is on vacation and we finally have a resto shaman that attends raids on a regular basis.

The first question I have is, assuming no warrior in the group, does windfury on a combat sword rogue outweigh GoA on two hunters (one survival, one marks) and a feral druid? I realize it's a terribly sub-optimal group, but we've got a severe lack of warriors on our Kara runs.

The second question is more of a "tell me this guy isn't serious sort of thing" but that same survival hunter CL claims that GoA on him and other hunters/ferals during a 25 man raid adds more DPS to the raid through EW (generally around 10 people can take advantage of it, 2 hunters, 2 rogues, tank warrior, dps warrior, and 2 ferals) than windfury would on the warrior and rogues. He throws stupid numbers at me like 900 raid dps from the extra ~90 agility's worth of EW uptime and magnitude. I'm 99% certain he's full of it, and I know GoA versus windfury has been beaten to death, but when I quote these forums to the hunter, he simply replies "they don't take survival/EW into account!" I just need some clarification here before I take it to the RL.

Finally, I saw earlier in this thread that the general rule is melee group > caster group > healer group > tank group for shaman placement in 25 mans. Assuming the shaman is elemental, does the same principle hold true? We only have two raiding shaman and if the resto spec'd one isn't there that night the only one we have is elemental. Would this swap the aforementioned order?

Thanks for hearing me out, I love this forum!

EDIT: To clarify our usual dps breakdown, an average Gruul meter shows myself (90% of the time without WF), GoA zealot hunter CL a bit behind, shadow priest a bit behind that, then it takes a pretty big drop-off to our other rogue, then another drop to our mages/locks and so on. Not to toot my horn, just giving a general idea of how our meters usually end up looking at the moment.

Alright, I've got a group setup question. We usually have two melee/semi-melee groups anymore, since rogues are so amazing. First group is resto shaman + fury warrior + 3 sword rogues. Second group is resto shaman + feral druid + dagger rogue + BM hunter + (random class that doesn't matter such as pally or warlock, or a second hunter, or occasionally an offtank warrior on trash for example).

Windfury is obviously the only choice for the first group, but what about for the second group? I was using windfury thinking that windfury for one dagger rogue > goa for one dagger rogue + BM hunter + feral druid, but this became a point of contention last night so I'd like to know either way what to be using.

If the shaman is elemental (41), not the caster group gains similar DPS to what a melee group would get with windfury on top of him needing the WoA for himself as well, but he also gains more DPS from being with the moonkin/shadow priest if you have at least one of those in the caster group. All in all when a shaman is elemental it's unargueably best to put him in the caster group - just like even if you're arguing wether the resto shaman should go in the melee group or not, you can be totally sure enhancement is best placed there.

In our raids though we usually have 2 rogues and 1 DPS warrior max, and often only 1 shaman (resto) in the raid. That means that our options usually are:

-rogue + rogue + warrior + hunter/feral shaman
-mage + mage + mage + shadow priest + moonkin/warlock

OR

-rogue + rogue + warrior + hunter + hunter/feral
-mage + mage + shadowpriest + shaman + moonkin/lock/mage

So you gain:
-WF+SoE on 2 rogues and a war
-VT/VE and sometimes moonkin aura for a mage/lock

You lose:
-101 damage X 4 caster DPSers
-101 healing for 1 shaman
-battleshout for 1 hunter and possibly some neglicible hunter buffs (as if the other group the hunter can be in isn't mostly healers he can buff that group's dps almost as well - still a loss overall though)
-45 mp5 X 4 caster DPSers - not that big but depending on classes and specs it can help dps too.
-VE/VT on the resto shaman

Let's say the VE/VT sort of cancel eachother out (healer vs dps, kinda argueable and overall pretty close in value, really depends who that DPSer is at the end).

101 damage X4 casters is rougly 18% damage.
Battleshout for a hutner is what, 12% DPS (rough guestimation here)?
MP5 for casters and the hunter buffs are hard to measure in terms of DPS as it's fight and class/spec dependant, but the other 2 factors already add up to 30% DPS.

With the first option you gain about 40% to rogue/warrior dps or so? (SoE AP + windfury totem)

At the end it's all about wether those factors not taken into account add up to 10% or not. I would give a rough estimation that they won't add up even in that scenario. However in my guild our melee dps simply sucks compared to our top caster DPSers which ends up with us ending up with the shaman in the caster group anyway. And besides a lot of our wipes are due to lack of heals => people dying => lack of DPS rather than just pure lack of DPS, so giving healers less excuses for losing people is another factor. In an optimal raid though, where all player skills and gear are equal, and the encounter isn't melee unfriendly, putting the resto shaman in the melee group will probably be the best benefit to the raid DPS, although not by a lot.

EDIT: and mana tide with 8000 mana pool adds up to 32 mp5 over time on average (1 use every 5 minutes, neglecting the few seconds in which you don't have mana spring up).

Is windfury really better than 101 spell damage for tankadin?

Whoah totally misread what he posted based on the quote in his post. Not sure about Wrath of Air vs WF.

I believe the number I've heard Paladins quote is 1 spell damage = 1 attack power for generating threat while tanking. So that would make Windfury the clear winner still.

Windufy is what.. ~160 more holy damage per 5 hits? Wrath of air is ~80 holy damage for SoR per 5 hits + whatever it gives to JoC, JoR and consecrate. Still not convinced.

This is just anecdotal, but from a pure threat point of view I tend to prefer Wrath of Air, but Windfury is a close second. Windfury is only a boost to auto-attack + seal threat, Wrath of Air is a boost to all of a Protection Paladin's threat.

As always do keep in mind that Windfury scales while Wrath of Air doesn't, so it's certainly possible that at certain levels of gear Windfury will start outperforming Wrath of Air for a Protection Paladin as well.

There's also the matter of who else the Protection Paladin is grouped with; outside of Karazhan I rarely tend to be in a caster group, in which case Windfury is worth it simply due to the benefit to other people in the group. (Or Grace of Air possibly)

I'm pretty bad at doing the math for stuff like this, so I'm not really going to try. What many people don't really think about is that white damage is a non-negligible portion of paladin threat. For multi-mob tanking I can definitely see that paladins would prefer WoA just because Consecrate and Holy Shield scale with it and not windfury.

Windfury has the advantage of scaling both white damage and seal damage due to the fact that seals do proc on windfury. It also allows for more reliable usage of SoV, which provides more overall threat when the stack doesn't fall. For single targets there should be some point at which the increase to SoR damage alone would warrant the use of windfury since it scales faster than any other paladin tanking ability.