No, it's not going to be viable. 2h vs dual wield issues aside, the weapon itself is pretty terrible and I doubt even the block tanks will want to use it because the heal is unreliable, small and at the expense of proper tanking stats.

If you really wanted to, you could emulate it already by dual wielding with Fallen Crusader on both weapons because the result is pretty much the same and noone is doing this either.

It really is pretty much accurate. The stat loss between 2xSouldrinker and a 2h is very significant.

Using 2 Heroic versions of Souldrinker gives you:

+498 Strength
+746 Stamina
+3.4% max health heal (vs 3% from FC)
Souldrinker - Items - Sigrie

compared to

+529 Strength
+824 Stamina

+387 mastery (40 from one socket included)
+145 dodge or parry rating (reforge)

Experimental Specimen Slicer - Items - Sigrie

4% undiminished parry is roughly 700-800 ratings worth at my gear level (~15% without counting SS). One FC proc is also giving you roughly 0.7% parry on top of that. But even leaving that aside, we are only short ~150-250 parry rating compared to the combined rating you get from the 2h to just SS. And this is assuming 1 mastery rating is worth only 1 parry rating - which it is not since mastery is better. Add the slightly higher stamina on top of this and yes, I would say the comparison is pretty valid.

This aside, what actually makes you think that having a healing proc is superior to passive stats? Chances are the heals are not enough to make a difference to begin with. Your argument that you might gain some avoidance over stamina (and some secondary stats since those are always higher on 2h's) doesn't even hold in this particular case since Souldrinker has no other stats whatsoever. For all intents and purposes it's a statless DPS weapon enchanted with Fallen Crusader - because it pretty much is.

Just to nitpick, the Souldrinker heals for twice the damage dealt, so it's 3.4% of max HP for each weapon. This is affected by VB and other self heal increasing effects.

Also, Souldrinker's effect might be very significant DPS-wise. With the new Outbreak, we could drop one point out of epidemic, and even RPM if necessary, to pick up Nerves of Cold Steel. I wouldn't be surprised if, due to all that, DW became competitive or superior to 2h.

I think the weapons have a good chance of helping smooth damage intake. With the changes do DS and the constant heals of DW these (wowhead reports a 15% proc chance with no ICD), DK healing might not be a rollercoaster ride in 4.3.

I probably should have doubled the heal values for both Souldrinker and FC instead of keeping it for a single weapon but the difference is pretty minimal (6.8% vs 6%). There is also just no way dual wielding these is going to be better DPS than using a 2h due to most of our damage coming from special abilities which use weapon damage and not auto attacks.

I am also not sure what the DS changes have to do with the value of the weapon, they are completely independant. Let alone the fact that if what you were saying is true, then people would already be dual wielding proper tank weapons with FC on it but there is a reason they don't do this. SS and SsG are simply superior choices to FC for tanking and as long as you agree with this, then using Souldrinkers just doesn't make any logical sense.

I think his point is that, because SS and SsG are superior to FC, a similar comparison can be made between tanking ratings and the heal on this weapon. The 4.3 2-hander offers roughly a SsG in terms of ratings (short by ~200 rating) and the Souldrinker is only slightly better than FC.

If I understand what you're saying correctly, you're really comparing apples and oranges here. DW tanks would still use either SsB or SB and the question is whether the effect of two Souldrinkers is better than the ratings on the 2h.

Regarding it's DPS, I can't firmly state that it is superior or even comparable to 2h, but there are some things to consider like the fact that you'll most likely be yellow hit capped with the 3% hit of NCS. Also, if my napkin math is correct, each weapon alone is worth ~880 dps (230k hp*1.7% damage*1.5 attacks*15% proc chance), with the OH doing less due to special abilities only using the MH.

Just meant that always having DS heal and BS, paired with this small heal, would smooth out the damage intake in the healer's perspective.

Maybe I am not saying it clearly enough so I'll try again.

1) The difference in stats between a 2h and 2xSouldrinkers is roughly the same as between Swordshattering and 2xFallen Crusader. This is just the stats so we don't have to bring in the weapon enchants on top of it (hence, it's comparing apples to apples).
2) SS and SsG are superior for tanking than 2xFC.
3) By that logic, the 2h is superior to the Souldrinkers.

Even if Souldrinker was so good, that it would make sense to switch to dual-wielding, wouldn't it still be better to only use it as your main hand and use a stat-stick in your offhand? Looking at a random rags hc log, the amount of melee strikes accounts for less than 20% of all attacks and as far as I know, special attacks like Death Strike don't have a chance to trigger offhand weapon procs (in blood spec anyway).

Of course the healing is negligible. So is the average amount of damage a little bit more parry rating or mastery is going to prevent. But if you simply went and said, that you could use FC or 2% parry as an enchant (and that's closer to the stated 4% - see my post above), then FC will heal you for more than that extra bit of parry will prevent on average. In my own logs, FC sometimes heals for more than or very close to even 4% of all melee damage I take for example.

You could try and argue that either one of the two provides more survivability or that somehow one of the two provides its mitigation in more meaningful chunks, but there's no measure to calculate which provides more survivability (as in chance to die) or lets your healers take more breaks or causes more overhealing. The only thing we can calculate is that the heal on the main hand is on average going to be healing for more than the lost stats would prevent in damage (note: based on the anecdotal evidence of my own logs), but that the miniscule gain is simply not worth giving up any dps for.

I'm tempted to try, at some point, two Souldrinkers both with Fallen Crusader...

Smith, I was thinking the exact same thing. With that, and an ordinarily-idiotic build emphasizing haste, you'd be cranking out an estimated 9K HPS just from weapon procs and minimum-value Death Strikes. Naturally, with crappy Mastery and avoidance from selling your soul for Haste, you'd be doing better than minimum on your Death Strikes, and you'd be able to throw one out on average every 5 seconds or less. Assuming you're taking 25K DPS, and assuming it's evenly distributed rather than bursty, your Death Strikes would hit for conservatively 30K heals and about 20K shields. This would bring you up around 14K HPS on yourself, with room to grow if you can effectively time your Death Strikes.

I haven't been on the PTR, nor even read much about it, so I don't know how realistic this would be. It would absolutely be entertaining.

In principle, at least for some fights, it could work: If you can DS immediately after every 2-3 melee hits, you'll mitigate the next one, leaving at most one "unmitigated" hit per three swings. During those 5 seconds, you would expect almost 40K heals just from weapon procs. While you can't count on them, there's only about a 4% chance you won't get at least two (~7K) heals during a given 5 second window.

With a more traditional non-haste tanking build, you could still keep about 3K HPS with dual Souldrinkers both with FC.

[quote=Illundai;2049835]...[quote]

And this is just not any other Pala vs DK comparison which is so much wanted on THIS webside? (see post Carebare) I thought here you would discuss what to do with your DK. How ever, in every other point I totally agree with you. Removed by Carebare

Its doing some random extra DPS based on your health. DW DPS are discussing them too. This might compensate the DPS loss doing dw for blood.