Weapon question...from a non-DK

[Malcor]

So!

I have been seeing this for a couple of months now, Even heard a few DK's try to explain it to me in LFR. But I am just not seeing the connection here.

It mostly comes from Blood DK's. Though I do see a few frost and unholy DK's doing it as well, But here we go.

Why do I keep seeing polearms like http://www.wowhead.com/item=81247 and http://www.wowhead.com/item=86071 on DK's? Mostly blood. I have heard "IT HAS MASTERY THEREFORE TANK WEAPON"

Where did this mindset come from that it's okay to use an agility polearm as a DK? I heard some Blood Legion Orc DK tank was using heroic Screaming Tiger? And that's what started this craze...It's really starting to bug me.

Any DK's that can explain this?

[Garkanh]

it really depends on what you had before it. for blood dk's Mastery>strength, if you are going for survivabillity and not threat generation. so if the amount of mastery is a lot higher than what you could get from a strength 2hander by reforging etc, it is good. although a druid/monk should probably have priority.

for dps i don't know why they would want it, unless it's a hc over a ilvl 463 or lower wep perhaps.

[Malcor]

it really depends on what you had before it. for blood dk's Mastery>strength, if you are going for survivabillity and not threat generation. so if the amount of mastery is a lot higher than what you could get from a strength 2hander by reforging etc, it is good. although a druid/monk should probably have priority.

for dps i don't know why they would want it, unless it's a hc over a ilvl 463 or lower wep perhaps.

I suppose that makes sense but it really just seems like a baddie thing to do. It's like a Resto druid rolling on http://www.wowhead.com/item=94974 because it has more Int/Spell power when it's clearly a DPS Caster staff :S

[draganid]

considering str = parry its kinda dumb

[devilminion]

it is not dumb. how many 2handers have crit on them? (almost everyone). very few 2handers have mastery.. any blood dk rolling for it is fine coz it has so much mastery on it. and saying str = parry so dumb is eq to saying agi = dodge so godly.

[aggixx]

You might see someone with such a weapon and think they're bad, but the reality is if it was an upgrade over their previous weapon they would be even dumber than you think they are if they didn't take that weapon when it was presented to them on a silver platter.

Related: I'm levelling a warlock alt right now and I frequently need on items that have spirit (when no one else needs on them) because they are a straight up upgrade. Who's the "baddie": The person who equips the spirit item because it's an upgrade for them or the person that passes solely because they think people would call them a bad player for wearing an item with spirit on it?

There's also the distinct possibility that they don't know their class and it wasn't actually an upgrade from what they had before, but I would tend to give people the benefit of the doubt before automatically assuming they were a "baddie".

[Manthis]

I suppose that makes sense but it really just seems like a baddie thing to do. It's like a Resto druid rolling on http://www.wowhead.com/item=94974 because it has more Int/Spell power when it's clearly a DPS Caster staff :S

Since mastery is generally the tank stat to go, and the traditional tanking weapons are gone for the most part, you're gonna see lots of tanks going with such weapons. Same goes with resto druids going for that staff. When healers hit a certain amount of spirit they're comfortable with, they turn towards gear that has more throughput stats, like the staff. Now if the staff would have hit on it, no healer with half a brain would ever roll on it.

Same goes with 1-handers/2-handers that don't have mastery on them. No plate tank with half a brain rolls for them. But if they claim any weapon that has mastery to be a tank weapon only, they're wrong. Same goes with the staff you linked.

[Tentei]

OK,so Blood dks have 2 routes they can choose full avoidance i.e parry, dodge or mastery builds. The agi polearms are very good for blood dk that are using a mastery build at lower item levels until the sha touched 2h axe. So that is actually not a bad thing to do. And it was a top guild Dk tank that was using normal http://www.wowhead.com/item=86071 after he crunched the numbers and it came out ahead of the 463 heroic weapon in regards to dps and for survivablity when they where progressing in heroic MSV. But no dps dk should be using it unless they where say replacing a 450 ilvl weapon.

[Nangz]

No dks should be taking that weapon, even on heroic, from an agi user. Period.

Compare the polearm off spirit kings heroic to the Lightbreaker Greatsword out of Scarlet Monastery. Using the sword you gain 899 str at the cost of exactly 300 mastery. Thats less than a gem. Now is it worth it to use at all? Probably not. For instance using Shinka LFR ( which anyone who has access to a heroic polearm from spirit kings has equal access to) nets you 1084 strength at the cost of ~250 mastery and thats not even counting the sha touched and prismatic gem slots.

I'm not saying you should never use the polearm, but there are very few situations where it would be worth it. The blood legion dk who used it got it weeks before terrace was even available and even then its back to the reasonable debate of 899 str vs 300 mastery. There is also the option that he took it for trolling which considering what his armory has shown in the past, is fairly likely.

[aggixx]

Nanqz, you're completely discounting the fact that it has 1500 more weapon DPS (almost 50% more) making it massively superior for a tank who values damage output (as any tank at the top end of progression should).

[Nangz]

I did discount dps but with good reason. If you value dps, you should give it to the dps. Your tank dps compared to a real dps getting a weapon is not even close in terms of effectiveness.

[aggixx]

That was the completely false at the beginning of T14 progression, where meeting DPS checks did sometimes come down to abusing vengeance mechanics. Until they changed those abusable mechanics, tanks were also doing incredibly well on most other fights even when doing them as intended.

For a rather extreme example of this: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=11277&e=11887 The other kills the log reinforce this as well. I'd be willing to bet you can look at the damage done on any of the top guilds first kills and you would see the tanks on top more often than not.

[Pickwickman]

I suppose that makes sense but it really just seems like a baddie thing to do. It's like a Resto druid rolling on http://www.wowhead.com/item=94974 because it has more Int/Spell power when it's clearly a DPS Caster staff :S

When Screaming Tiger dropped on our first Spirit Kings kill and our monk tank won one with coin I took it as a Blood DK. It had a buttload more weapondamage (outdoing the str I lost) and a hugefuck amount of mastery on it. No other weapon came close to it for tanking until Sha of Fear. And I wasn't going to use a 463, or a Starshatter with crappy stats, especially seileing our DPS could make better use out of z SS.


You need to learn that secondary stats, especially in this expansion, can be a big gamechanger for tanks and for dps. You should compare the weapon with what they had, and what is available to them. A 522 int staff with hit/haste would blow a 463 Spi/Haste staff out of the way for any healer if they reforge hit to spi. Does that make them bad for taking it if it drops and noone can use it? If you even consider that youre seriously not aware of anything regarding stats in this game.

[oplawlz]

I did discount dps but with good reason. If you value dps, you should give it to the dps. Your tank dps compared to a real dps getting a weapon is not even close in terms of effectiveness.

If you're talking about a 10k dps increase for the tank (easily) vs a 2k increase in dps for the other guy, it's perfectly valid. I didn't even look at the difference in stam between those two, but I'm guessing it's substantial. Depends a lot on who else is in your raid, I suspect --- if im not mistaken only a feral or ww even wants agi polearms anymore, right?

[aggixx]

if im not mistaken only a feral or ww even wants agi polearms anymore, right?

Right, and a lot of guilds didn't have a Windwalker monk at the time. Giving a heroic agi weapon to your tank over a feral druid when your tank is doing top DPS on most of the encounters is a completely justified progression-oriented distribution of loot.

[Shiira]

That was the completely false at the beginning of T14 progression, where meeting DPS checks did sometimes come down to abusing vengeance mechanics. Until they changed those abusable mechanics, tanks were also doing incredibly well on most other fights even when doing them as intended.

Vengeance is almost exactly the same damage increase with an epic weapon as it is with a blue weapon.

While it's true that tank damage has never been more relevant than it has in this expansion, weapons are a lot less important for damage from tanks than they are for damage from dps.

[aggixx]

Fair enough.

[Rickarus]

I did discount dps but with good reason. If you value dps, you should give it to the dps. Your tank dps compared to a real dps getting a weapon is not even close in terms of effectiveness.

You need to remember that during the MSV heroic race, i.e. lower gear levels, Blood DKs (and to a lesser extent tanks in general) were almost always the highest dps in many raids. There was quite the uproar about it until Blizzard started making blue posts confirming that once people got fairly geared, dps would be back on top. Also, you must remember that the only people who would have wanted that as a dps weapon would be feral druids, as it was already established that monks preferred 1handers (for dps), even to the point of 463s being considered about equal with a 489 2h. So assuming no feral druid, the only other choice would be a Brewmaster monk, or Guardian druid, and assuming none of those as well, then letting your blood dk, which was probably already doing the most dps in the raid, have a huge dps increase for heroic progression, seems like a smart idea.

There is also the fact that these top guilds tend to funnel gear into their main groups by running multiple raids per week with say, 20 alts and 5 mains, so if there simply happened to be no class that could use it more effectively among the mains in that DKs run during the first week, it would seem stupid for him not to take the obvious dps and survivability increase.

---------- Post added 2013-03-24 at 12:38 AM ----------

If you're talking about a 10k dps increase for the tank (easily) vs a 2k increase in dps for the other guy, it's perfectly valid. I didn't even look at the difference in stam between those two, but I'm guessing it's substantial. Depends a lot on who else is in your raid, I suspect --- if im not mistaken only a feral or ww even wants agi polearms anymore, right?

WW doesn't really want polearms/staves unless they are extremely unlucky with 1h drops, as its generally accepted that 1h weapons of tier x are better than a 2h of tier x+1, at least for the time being. Brewmaster on the other hand, as well as guardian and feral druids, would want an agi polearm/staff.

[Shiira]

You need to remember that during the MSV heroic race, i.e. lower gear levels, Blood DKs (and to a lesser extent tanks in general) were almost always the highest dps in many raids.

They were but it had almost nothing to do with weapons. If you have a blue 463 two hander and 150k attack power you're getting 77% of your weapon damage from attack power. So you're only getting 23% of your weapon damage from your weapon. And tanks could get a hell of a lot more than 150k ap back when vengeance was broken.

Right now I'm getting close to 60% of my weapon damage from my weapons, and it's even higher for specs that don't gem primary stats.

[Trubo]

I suppose that makes sense but it really just seems like a baddie thing to do. It's like a Resto druid rolling on http://www.wowhead.com/item=94974 because it has more Int/Spell power when it's clearly a DPS Caster staff :S

Resto Druids aren't as Spirit Dependent as other Healers so that's a perfectly viable staff for them, especially that mastery.

As for your original question it comes down to what weapon they were using before and if the weapon has a ton of mastery.

DPS: If you're upgrading your weapon's ilvl immensely (say 40+) then the agility weapon wins from raw weapon damage increase.

Blood: If the agility weapon has significantly more Mastery on it than your previous weapon AND the loss of the parry + attack power from strength isn't a big deal for you, take the agility weapon.

it is not dumb. how many 2handers have crit on them? (almost everyone). very few 2handers have mastery.. any blood dk rolling for it is fine coz it has so much mastery on it. and saying str = parry so dumb is eq to saying agi = dodge so godly.

Agility hasn't granted Dodge for non-Agility tanks since FL.