Blade-Ward vrs Blood draining

[Galith]

To me Blade-Ward just looks great all around, it looks like a nice + to avoidance and decent threat (for a tanking enchant), but my guild keeps saying that Blood draining is MUCH better, but it just doesn't seem it to me. What is the common enchant for a paladin weapon? I just picked up "The Facelifter" off of 10 man Put. so.. what is the accepted enchant among the paladin community?

[Taun]

To me Blade-Ward just looks great all around, it looks like a nice + to avoidance and decent threat (for a tanking enchant), but my guild keeps saying that Blood draining is MUCH better, but it just doesn't seem it to me. What is the common enchant for a paladin weapon? I just picked up "The Facelifter" off of 10 man Put. so.. what is the accepted enchant among the paladin community?

Not that i'm entirely sure, but i believe that blooddraining is almost considered EH and avoidance isn't something you should gem for nor enchant for if there's an EH enchant to replace it.

I may be entirely wrong, but from my own experiences it's the EH worth. And the enchant will save your life.

[Arkaena]

I don't play a paladin but I do play a tanking warrior, but also not as my main. I wanted to suggest Mongoose. It still gives 1% dodge it seems without diminishing returns, the slight attack speed increase, which won't do a whole lot for a pally if I'm correct, and a slightly increased crit chance for spells that use your melee crit %. On my warrior it turns out to be around 2% crit. As well, it's a little bit of extra armor.

The thing that I like is that it's a 15 second buff which provides that stuff for 15 seconds after it procs unlike blade ward which (i think) only has it's effect for 1 parry (i'm also assuming an average proc rate similar to mongoose). Blood draining, I used to have it on my weapon but I don't know if a 2000 heal is all that important or worth it over something else.

...just what's stirring around in my head.

[Iselian]

You're mostly on the mark, Ark.

Mongoose has a higher proc rate than Blade Ward. Blade Ward can stack, but the entire buff is consumed upon one parry. The threat is negligible.

Mongoose's speed increase isn't half bad, considering the power of our SoV/C procs in sustained threat. The armor provides a small amount of effective health. The agility gives us a fair amount of dodge. I'd wager at least 1% in my ICC gear, if not a bit more.

Blood Draining could be argued that it procs just when you need it. This is true. It also means that for the large time you're above 35% health, it doesn't do jack squat.

Blade Ward is really not great in general, due to the lower uptime and lower proc rate.

[Horn]

The general consensus for paladin tank weapon enchants is that Mongoose is probably the best all around enchant, Blood Draining is the best EH option, and Bladeward is the best avoidance.

Most associate their preference with either Mongoose or Blood Draining.

[Nikoll]

i like mongoose the best, for reasons stated above. slightly more threat, better uptime, and a good avoidence/eh buff when it is up. A little bit of all enchants.

[Wannabetank]

I dont know the excate value but bladewarding is 1% at the bare minimum of my dps on boss's. Im not going to say its 1% avoidance and some damage but it defently is procing alot to be 1% of my dps condering its 4k on single targets. My guess is its up roguely every 17.5seconds (4000/100=40 (bladeward does 700dmg) 700/40=17.5)) Bladeward also has a hidden cooldown of 10seconds to have it stack is extremely lucky even with 50% proc.

3.9% parry if u include dimishing returns. With mongose always being up and 3.9/17.5= 0.222% passive avoidance for myself. Even if this was lightly wrong it would have to be around 5 times more to be as much avoidnace as mongose excluding the armour from agility.. the damage isnt holy damage either for threat.

If your going to pick up a enchant i say mongoose, Absolutly not the blood draining enchant due to prot pally having ardent defender at 35%!

[Cardolan]

I dont know the excate value but bladewarding is 1% at the bare minimum of my dps on boss's. Im not going to say its 1% avoidance and some damage but it defently is procing alot to be 1% of my dps condering its 4k on single targets. My guess is its up roguely every 17.5seconds (4000/100=40 (bladeward does 700dmg) 700/40=17.5)) Bladeward also has a hidden cooldown of 10seconds to have it stack is extremely lucky even with 50% proc.

3.9% parry if u include dimishing returns. With mongose always being up and 3.9/17.5= 0.222% passive avoidance for myself. Even if this was lightly wrong it would have to be around 5 times more to be as much avoidnace as mongose excluding the armour from agility.. the damage isnt holy damage either for threat.

If your going to pick up a enchant i say mongoose, Absolutly not the blood draining enchant due to prot pally having ardent defender at 35%!

Your math is way off, due in large part to being completely incorrect. In order to determine how often you're getting procs, you'd need to know how much damage your individual Blade Ward buffed parries dealt, how much overall damage all of your Blade Ward buffed parries dealt, and how long the fight lasted.

I can tell you, however, that with Blade Ward buffed parries dealing a total of 4000 damage at 700 damage each, you'd have had ~5.7 of them during the fight. In order for those to happen every 17.5 seconds, the fight would have had to only last ~100 seconds. That seems far too short for a current tier boss fight.

Also, there's no longer any reason to avoid Blood Draining because of negative interactions with Ardent Defender.

[Saangi]

bladeward sucks, its only there for 1 parry. then its all gone.

it doesn't add more sustained avoidance then mongoose.

[xdwbx]

Blade Ward stacks often for me. I prefer to use it as do most of the other progression paladins on my server.

Blood Draining is good as well, providing the most EH I believe. However I do not use it due to the fact that I am not always in a group that will have bleeds on my target, and as they are necessary for BD to stack, I don't run with it.

As Cardolan just said, they changed Ardent Defender so it can no longer be leap-frogged by Blood Draining

What it comes down to really is preference. Mongoose is in the middle with Blade Ward and Blood Draining on the Avoidance and Effective Health ends of the spectrum respectively.

For those who say that Blade Ward just outright sucks probably haven't looked at the data on it in a while. Yes, it had a horrible proc rate until 3.2, but they buffed it significantly. Don't blindly listen to ignorance of the nay-sayers.

[Cardolan]

However I do not use it due to the fact that I am not always in a group that will have bleeds on my target, and as they are necessary for BD to stack, I don't run with it.

I've read this a few times now when people are discussing Blood Draining, and I'd just like to point out that it's wrong.

[Chloe]

I prefer 26 agility over mongoose, since mongoose is alot more RNG and not allways there when i want it, sometimes mongoose saves you, some times it betrays you, and if you go for a "best-case-senario" on procs on CD, mongoose does give higher overall stats than 26 agility, but hey, thats best case senario.

[Megatwan]

Blade Ward is subpar for one reason only: how its cosumed.


Blood Draining for EH... IF YOURE GETTING THAT LOW, if not its worthless, ie normal modes with a healer in greens
Mongoose for avoidance (very high uptime, so i dont buy into the RNG thing)
Agil for ^^ and threat minus the rng
Hit Crit for threat (although i dont buy this as a good idea)

Blade ward for pathetic avoidance gain and the only thing its good at: burst threat.



Bottom line, blade ward is cosumed on normal parrys; imagine if mongoose was consumed on dodges... no one would touch it.


TBH i almost wanna puke when i see a tank with Blade Ward. Id rather use life ward or berserking before i ever thought about taking blade ward, seriously...

[Mietsch]

TBH i almost wanna puke when i see a tank with Blade Ward. Id rather use life ward or berserking before i ever thought about taking blade ward, seriously...

Berserking???? That would be about the worst enchant for a tank. Just because of the armor debuf. Or am I totally wrong here?

[Megatwan]

Berserking???? That would be about the worst enchant for a tank. Just because of the armor debuf. Or am I totally wrong here?

well its only 5%, and i would use a real tanking enchant first... but ya blade ward is poop so...

[ponth]

I go for Mongoose because I like the bling...
Seriously though, blade ward might look great on first glance, but it's lacklustre if you actually research the mechanics.

Blade Ward is subpar for one reason only: how its cosumed.


Blood Draining for EH... IF YOURE GETTING THAT LOW, if not its worthless, ie normal modes with a healer in greens
Mongoose for avoidance (very high uptime, so i dont buy into the RNG thing)
Agil for ^^ and threat minus the rng
Hit Crit for threat (although i dont buy this as a good idea)

Blade ward for pathetic avoidance gain and the only thing its good at: burst threat.



Bottom line, blade ward is cosumed on normal parrys; imagine if mongoose was consumed on dodges... no one would touch it.


TBH i almost wanna puke when i see a tank with Blade Ward. Id rather use life ward or berserking before i ever thought about taking blade ward, seriously...

Pretty much sums it up.

[Offhand]

Actual numbers would be a whole lot better for these arguements. "This one is EH" "This one is avoidance" and "This one goes away" are all entirely useless in their reasoning's without mathematic support.

Otherwise, this thread is just "I use X and hate on others that disagree just because".

[tlitd]

Berserking???? (...)

well its only 5% (...)

There are a couple of things that should be mentioned when one speaks about Berserking and tanks :

• unlike Toughness or AED that have impact only on the base armor, Berserk affects total armor
• below the armor mitigation cap, relative_TTL=f(total_armor) is monotonically decreasing (alternatively worded, Berserk has a greater impact when the armor values are higher); above the armor mitigation cap, Berserk has no impact on rTTL

The second point can be easily deducted with the aid of simple formulae :

AM = min(A/(A+C),0.75)
1-AM=max(C/(A+C),0.25)
relative_TTL=max(C/(A+C),0.25)*max(C/(A*K+C),0.25)-1

A=total armor
C= constant relative to attacker, 16635 for level 80 PC against level 83 NPC
K=0.95

The (trimmed) plot looks like this.

Actual numbers would be a whole lot better for these arguments.

Don't spoil the fun, threads like this serve a higher purpose. ;D

[luthe]

Blade Ward doesn't tickle everyone's fancy. I personally like it, although that's just me. Though i may give mongoose a whirl when i get a new weapon just to compare. I'm disappointed with blade ward since they nerfed the bad ass animation... my blood and glory had a huge blade ward animation it looked like i was wearing a miniature sun.

maybe when i get a 251 tanking weapon i'll give mongoose a whirl again and see which i like better. Although admittedly the difference is fairly small when it boils down to it, and any noticable difference will probably be able to be credited to luck. The odds of you actually SEEING such a small difference is very slim.

[Ori-Bal]

If you plan on tanking in ICC 25 then get Blood Draining.

You're a tank, think 'survivability', not dps, not tps (yes tps matters, but below surviving & at that lvl it really should not be an issue).

Blood Draining+argent defender+icc gear = much better survivability.

Think like this --- you get hit, drop below 35%, AD procs, blood draining procs (trinket procs if you're using a suitable one), you jump above 35%, then Woot, next hit brinngs you below 35% again, AD procs again, yesyes, blood draining not only brought you above 35% but it also enabled you to take 20% reduced dmg on the next blow (maybe cause healers are being muppets and only got 1 small heal off).

Combined with ICC lvl tank gear, you'll be taking reduced physical hits which works very well with the whole 'brought to 33%, bd proc, 36% (maybe helped with a small hit, or hot)', etc, you get the idea.

Think survivability.

Think outside the box.