Tank: Warrior weapon question

Hello TankSpot. Long time reader, first time poster.

Anyways, so my guild just started doing DS10 (normal) and I'm our tank. On our first run I got Hand of Morchok. Now I'm using that for tanking as my previous weap was the mace from hour of twilight. I also just got Souldrinker in LFR today, and my question is, which is better for tanking? It's a choice between:
+19 stamina
+159 mastery
+55 dodge
+3 expertise (orc)
+84 crit.
Versus
+7 strength
+ Souldrinker proc (1.3%)

Im leaning majorly towards the axe. Both on survivablity and threat the axe seems much better. Also, if I get my hands on the normal version of Souldrinker, should I use that?

Its pretty relative to your current gear level, imho.
At lower ilvl´s hand may be more interesting simply because you are still struggling to keep full CTC and reasonable avoidance levels, and dont need that much damage/threat output to help dps timers or a larger health pool to survive the fights bursts. As you progress and gear through heroics or even the latter normals, you may find hiting full CTC trivial and that the higher base damage/stam as well as the healing from souldrinker is a better contribution.

With this macro it says I'm at 91.87 CTC without shield block so I guess I'll keep the axe for now :-)
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance() +5))
Also got a stamina trinket from heroic twilight, hoping to get the mastery one in firelands tonight.

Thank you for your help

Totally forgot my resolve of the undying. Im at 95.30 CTC when it is up.

Armory link?

Personally when I got souldrinker I wasn't capped either, but I used it anyway. Normal mode DS you're not going to see much that's going to destroy a tank on 10 man, CTC is also situational.

Over at Maintankadin Theck has run numbers from a pally point of view and the LFR Souldrinker beats Hand of Morchok in DPS/Threat. The healing from Souldrinker is pretty good over a boss fight, it's pretty much like a small HoT on you.

Try out Souldrinker for a few bosses and look at the logs, I think your going to be pretty happy with both the damage and healing.

I've just done a couple of sims; 403 Souldrinker vs 410 Hand. Souldrinker is about 1% ahead on DPS and worth around 700HPS, but you need around 200 more mastery to cover the CTC loss on Souldrinker which works out to about a 300stam loss. Which one is better is really going to depend on the fight, if your being bursted down with boss melee attacks i'd take Hand, whereas on more fights with constant tank pressure i'd take souldrinker.

TBH though there's so little in it i'd go with whichever one allows you to use the best looking transmog with the rest of your gear.

Thank you all for your replies and I think I'm gonna draw my conclusion from Tengestein's post. Since the difference is so small I'll be using the hand as my main weapon. Simply because I'm a orc and aren't CTC capped yet, which will be what I'll aiming for.

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Souldrinker is about 1% ahead on DPS

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Is this including the 3 expertise I get as an orc?

I'll keep the soul drinker and use it as a situational weapon. Maybe for magical heavy fights with mending on it?

Just FYI, the 300 stamina referenced by Teng is worth over 5k life raidbuffed. I really am on the fence about Souldrinker, while I think it would be nice to have the extra bit of healing, when I die it tends to be things that wouldn't have been prevented had I had another HoT on me (basically the effect of the proc), while another 5k life might have been the buffer the healers needed to keep me alive. It doesn't help the Souldrinker's case when I have only ever seen it drop once in the alt raid, and never in the main raid (in 13 kills, will be 14 this week).

If you are not ctc capped in 378 DS gear, you are doing it wrong.

700 hps is no brainer >> 300 stam in my opinion.

Do not forget Souldrinker scales well with gear, is very good in multimob situations and benefits from Last Stand and other max HP cds.

I ran the sims as belf and forsook Arcane torrent. The Orc racial is enough to put Hand 0.18% ahead on DPS, which is about twice my error so how much confidence you want to place in that is up to you. While I concur with Fetzie that 5k is a significant buffer in most tank death scenarios, it is a 7k heal (on a 200kHP tank) which is not an insignificant amount of healing IF it happened at the right time, and again how much confidence you have in that is up to you, however i do think treating it as a HoT is not really the right way to go about it since it does not tick reliably, I've had it proc 2 seconds apart and then had stints where it doesn't proc for another 25 second interval.

I still think its close enough that that whichever you can transmog better is the deciding factor, but if you're absolutely must minmax i'd go Hand when bursting a tank is a liabilty, and Souldrinker when Tank DPS matters (i'm no Orc) or wiping through attrition is more likely. Talk with you healers as to which would they prefer.

With the 10% debuff (and presumably in 2-3 weeks a 15% debuff if the timeline remains consistent) deaths to attrition should not be that much of a problem anymore.

I have 260k life raidbuffed. 1.3% of that is 3380. Assuming the proc is not affected by Curse of the Elements, that would be 3380*2=6760 healing * 1.06 (talented 6% healing taken) = 7165 healing total. As opposed to adding another permanent 2500 life to my health pool (391 Beth to 410 morchok with a 75 stamina gem).

A 200k life tank would only get around 5500 healing from the 1.3% Souldrinker.

How are you getting a 7k heal on a 200k tank? 200000*0.013=2600. 2600*2=5200. 5200*1.06=5521 healing.

I'm using 403 souldrinker vs 410 Hand in my sims (eaiser to import off my armour and swap weapons in game than it is to build two chardev profiles), and 200k is unbuffed, average hit buffed is 3528, and heal is 7056


...and i need to go upgrad simcraft becuase its not doing the 6% extra healing

I've been debating this myself for some time between 410 hand and 403 souldrinker. Currently using the souldrinker and all the DK's have 2 hands now but it's still up in the air. In the end I think I'm gonna stick with the souldrinker because otherwise I'll have to ignore some socket bonuses and I'm quite fond of using socket bonuses.

On a side note I'm having a similar conundrum with the HM soulshifter vortex trinket. So many warriors are SO strongly against it, but I think it may be worth picking up.

Give me a scenario where Vortex is better than both H Scales and SoE. The common "delay SB waiting for a proc" argument is pretty meaningless, you won't have the luxury to do so when shit hits the fan.

The proc on vortex increases your crit block chance by 27.426%. That's more than Shield block does. If it's stacked with shield block or not, it's still a very effective mitigation.

I have healing potions and engineering belt, the odds of me needing scales to save me is slim and likely I would want to sit on the charged heal in case of emergency so I may use it 1 time, 2 if things went bad, in a fight. The amount of healing saved from the proc would far outweigh that.

My first trinket slot is pretty much set to Indomitable pride and my second is between vortex and mirror depending on the fight. I'm sure SoE is useful for HM madness but I'm not there yet, outside of that fight any fight where I don't need mirror I would prefer effectively an additional 50% up time on shield block from vortex.

I know a lot of people thing vortex is garbage for warriors but I just don't see it. ~3600 hp more than scales and a free 20 second shield block every ~100 seconds.

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it's still a very effective mitigation

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The amount of healing saved from the proc

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That's cool. I am just not sure how this helps your survivability in any way, shape or form. Work on lowering your ceilings instead of averages, its a lot more important for a tank.

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Originally Posted by kopcap

I am just not sure how this helps your survivability in any way, shape or form.

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If vortex gives almost the exact same benefit as shieldblock, then you are saying shield block doesn't help your survivability in any way, shape or form.

This isn't wrath where we look at combat as a 3 second window and plan all our gear around surviving long enough for spam healing to keep you alive. Healer mana and overall mitigation play important roles.

SB is more than just 3k mastery.

Warriors weakness is our lack of selfheals and absorbs comparing to other tanks, any bit helps (unless its BC :)). Increasing crit block uptime is not too high on our agenda.

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This isn't wrath where we look at combat as a 3 second window and plan all our gear around surviving long enough for spam healing to keep you alive.

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HM progression sorta is. Tank deaths don't come from attrition, not since healers swapped their blues for epics over a year ago. Tank deaths usually come from short focused 3-5s bursts.

The problem with Vortex is that we can't control when it procs (besides not hitting things), Yeah it will save a little mana when it procs at the start, but i don't really want it to proc until Zon'ozz levels me with psychic drain, or has near max stacks of focused anger. Likewise the only way I can guaranteed I get a proc on Blackorn when I'm tanking is to not attack black horn when the other tank has him which is gonna extend the fight a little dashing the idea of being a mana efficient tank. likewise am i meant to hold off until I the trinket procs on spine before stacking the amalgamation to 9? If it was on use it would be sex, if it was on melee hit taken it would be good, but on damage dealt just devalues the proc, who cares if I get mastery proc whilst downing the last round of blistering tentacles on platform? or killing a Yoursahj ooze or whilst Zon'ozz is summoning his ball, or on Hagara's ice totems,

It's not that it's bad, its just that there are better trinkets as for effective mitigation. Mitigation when we need it.