Monday, May 4, 2009

Tankadin Weapon Enchants

What enchant to put on your favorite weapon is always a dilemma. If you are a lucky looter, you might have multiple tanking weapons with different enchants in your bag, one for each type of encounter.

Currently I'm running with Potency on my Last Laugh. It's an old school TBC enchant that starts to feel a bit too old school. There was no upgrade to this enchant in WotLK, since they changed the potency enchants to give Attack Power instead of Strength.

I've been looking at the other options available, but cannot find anything that stands out as being exactly what I want.

Threat
  • With good enough gear, Accuracy is the best threat enchant, granting you both hit and crit. I like this one, since I'm currently a bit low on hit, and crit is always fun. But it's damn expensive, so I'll save it for my first Ulduar weapon instead.
  • Aforementioned Potency is the second best threat enchant around, granting strength which gives you both Attack Power and Block Value, two of the tankadin's primary threat stats. It also grants a minor mitigation due to the Block Value. So threat + mitigation = yummy. It's really sad that it didn't get an upgrade in WotLK.
  • A third (and cheaper) option is the Titanium Weapon Chain. It grants hit (useful) and shorter disarm duration (not so useful for a paladin).
Avoidance
  • Blade Ward is a new enchant in 3.1. It procs an increased parry rating (avoidance) followed by extra damage when parrying (threat). Sounds good? Maybe. The proc rate and internal cooldown aren't public, and tests are still ongoing. Personally, I dislike enchants that proc instead of having a static value. This enchant can proc at useless times (like when hitting XT-002's heart or Kologarn's arm) and thus wasting the internal cooldown. And what if it doesn't proc when you REALLY need it? I'm waiting for the test results to see if this is worth it.
  • Exceptional Agility is another avoidance option. It grants agility (d'oh) which gives you dodge (avoidance), armor (mitigation), and crit (threat). What's there not to like? Well, I just like strength better than agility...
  • Mongoose. Yet another old school enchant. Grants loads of agility and some attack speed "occasionally". Increased attack speed doesn't matter much for a tankadin, and I have already stated my dislike for proccing enchants. What good is 120 agility if you don't get it when you need or want it? Leave this enchant to the rogues.
Other
  • Blood Draining is a new enchant in 3.1. The enchant stacks Blood Reserve up to five times when striking an enemy or inflicting damage with bleed attacks. When you reach 35% of your health, it heals you for some amount depending on the number of stacks. This is a weird enchant. You only have use for it when you are close to death, which means when your healers are slacking. It kicks in at 35%, which is a really bad time for a tankadin, since that's when our Ardent Defender kicks in. If you are really unlucky, this enchant can put you just above the 35% marker and thus make you take full hits when Ardent Defender should have lowered the incoming damage instead. The enchant also works on bleed effects, which paladins do not have. It's obviously not meant for tankadins, but for druids and warriors.
Conclusion
I only see three viable options: Potency, Accuracy, and Exceptional Agility. At this point, I'm sticking with Potency a while longer.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Arnax