Weapon decision suggestions

[Vold]

So I've been tanking Kara since about 4-5 weeks after TBC released.

In all this time of running Kara every single week I've never seen a [item]King's Defender[/item] drop. That is, unti last night.

I few months ago I managed to pick up a [item]Blade of the Unrequited[/item] since all of our rogues had better, and I immediately threw 3 Solid Stars in there and have been using it to tank ever since. I have to say, I love that dagger and it has served me well.

My question is thus: when looking at my gear set as a whole, which weapon do you think I should generally be using for bosses (I use KD for most trash as it generates better initial threat I've found).

You can view my armory by clicking my name below my signature.
With the Blade of the Unrequited equipped I have 14704 health and 16513 armor, both unbuffed.
With the King's Defender equipped I have 14464 health (I think) and 16713 armor, also unbuffed.

Basically it's a question of 200 armor or ~240 health. I know the dagger gives me a small amount more total effective health (about 30), but after seeing Ciderhelm's note about the difference in two tanks with the same EH but differing health and armor, I got to thinking about which one would be more beneficial for my level of content.

As a little bit of background information on my situation, I am the MT for my guild which is recently reformed from a guild that recently broke up (dying server and transfers ftl). We're currently attempting Gruul with the new group of people when we can field the attendance. We have a few veterans who are geared out through Gruul, but in general our raiders have a mix of Blue/Heroic/Kara gear and our DPS is a bit lacking overall. I don't have threat problems at all with the raid as it currently stands.

Thanks for any opinions or help you may give.

-Vold

[adrenalize]

If i remember rightly, with a dagger, and it's Normallization formula, Your not generating as much threat as you would with a "normal" 1-h weapon, But Im not sure if thats exactly what it was or not. So where you might lose 30 health and gain some armor, You may also gain some TPS as well. But in all honesty you would be better waiting for one of they smart guys comes in and see what they say.

However, for the record, I would go with the [item]King's Defender[/item] Because I just love Swords for a tank

[Crimsonstorm]

The armor on the KD gives about 2/3 as much effective health as the extra stam on the dagger. The armor is also preventing damage instead of simply allowing you to take it.

The blade has 18 ap and 9 crit, which is a small threat boost.

The KD has 17 hit, which is more threat than the dagger stats, and also 13 defense. So the Kings Defender is better.


Additionally, the KD is a sword, so it does more damage with Devastate than a dagger, since daggers get much less bonus damage from AP on instant attacks than other 1H weapons do.

I'd say KD all the way.

[thugthedum]

with daggers, any attack that applies ap based dps gets a nerf.

An epic sword at 100dps at 1.6 and the same sword at 2.9 both get the same swing speed when computing AP bonus to your instant attacks; they are both computed at 2.4. This means a 1.6 instant gets buffed slightly; and the 2.9 gets nerfed. This is because otherwise, you would always want to take the 2.9, and faster weapons would be useless. So a KD @ 1.6 gets 2.4 speed worth of AP added to its instant attacks (devastate, whirlwind). But a dagger is always normalized at 1.8. So a dagger with otherwise identical stats only gets 1.8 speed worth of AP bonus to it's instants.

Now granted; whirlwind doesn't see much use tanking. But this will effect devastate.

Edit: sorry crimson, i think we were posting at the same time.

[Vold]

Thanks for the reply Adrenalize! Yeah, I know my dagger is normalized to 1.7 for Devastate, that's why I mentioned that I don't currently have any problems staying above my dps for threat.

Slightly off topic but pertaining to threat: since my guild is a reform, quite a few of the members are relatively new and not quite as geared/experienced as you'd expect, so I'm not having to fight too hard for aggro. On a dying, low-pop server we have a nasty habit of having our geared veterans get frustrated and transfer off the server. We replace them with newbies and start the gearing process all over again, hence our DPS usually doesn't give me too hard of a time with threat.

Back on topic: using my dagger my Devastates still hit for about 220-230 after 5 sunders, so they generate more threat than an additional sunder armor would. I usually run right around 770-870 TPS depending on the boss (TPS numbers according to KTM as I haven't switched the guild to Omen yet). With my KD and the limited testing I was able to do last night I put out roughly 50 more TPS but I'd imagine a good chunk of that is due to the +hit. I definitely will always favor my KD over the dagger for threat races.



Edit for extra posts while typing:

Thanks for the input crimson and thug. However, my question had nothing to do with threat as I'm aware of the mechanics already and know which weapon to use for a threat race. I also know that technically I get about 30 more effective health with the dagger than with the KD.

I saw a post today by Ciderhelm about effective health that got me thinking about this. Here's the quote:

Adding one thought spurred on by a comment Cronedog made.

There is a difference between Health and Armor in the Effective Health equation. With equal Effective Health, the tank with more Health will be more Rage efficient; the tank with more Armor will be more Mana efficient.

After thinking about this for a bit I was wondering whether people though that with my current gear setup the extra Health for Rage efficiency would be better than the extra Armor for healer's Mana efficiency. I'm wondering about opinions based on the 200 armor vs. 240 health argument at my current levels of both.

Thanks again for the opinions guys, I do appreciate all input.

[Stonehoof]

I don’t think rage efficiency is really an issue in most regards, obviously doing kara is decked out t6 will have issues.

My main concern is being the damage sponge. That means that I have to keep threat on the mob, mitigate the damage I receive so that the healers can keep me up, and produce enough threat that the DPSers can go at their target in order to take it down before the healer mana is gone and we wipe.


Remember the cycle of marvels The Incredible Hulk?
the more he fights, the madder he gets
the madder he gets, the stronger he gets
the stronger he gets, the more he fights

My logic to the Rage vs Mana efficiency is kinda the inverse of that where:
the more damage I take, the more threat I do
the more threat I do, the faster the mob dies
the faster the mob dies, the less healing I take
the less healing I take, the more damage I take

Now if you apply rage efficiency to that cycle, you can do more threat and the DPSers can dps that much harder, hopefully killing him faster and thusly being easier on the mana pool for the healers.
It seems to me that not many fights are gauge in this type of direction, fight that are basically kill him before he kills you are, Hakker, Prince, few others. But in the large scale of things, tanks are putting out tremendous threat, there are tons of threat reduction techniques available, that rage efficiency does not seem to play that much of a factor.

If you apply Mana efficiency to that cycle, you increase the size of health that you theoretically have until the boss dies. Because it does not matter how fast you can kill something if you cannot survive the fight. Staying alive is greater then DPS. Gruul, High King, Mag, etc etc.
Many more fights seem to be gauged on some trick that will KO you guys if they are not kept up or some other mechanic performed. It does not matter how rage efficient you are if all your DPSers are dead or if you die.

Hopefully that either shed some light or if it caused further confusion, just ignore it

[Stonehoof]

Just two cents on the sword vrs dagger question…

Please don’t use daggers, its makes me cry when I see a warrior wield one. Yes there have been some exceptions, felstriker and that one from ssc, but all in all, you are going to do more white damage with the sword, which is more rage and more threat.

[Crimsonstorm]

imo, 200 armor is about as good as 240 health. You lose a bit of effective health, but not a lot. You prevent damage instead of merely surviving more, which is superior. So I think this is roughly even.

The Kings Defender then also has 13 defense rating, making it a bit better overall defensively.


Offensively, the KD does better devastate threat, and the hit rating it gives is worth more threat than the dagger stats. Thus KD wins offensively.

KD being better both offensively and defensively = it is superior.

[thugthedum]

After thinking about this for a bit I was wondering whether people though that with my current gear setup the extra Health for Rage efficiency would be better than the extra Armor for healer's Mana efficiency.

Well, rage = threat, and you said you were OK for threat. So all things being equal and you don't need more threat and your hlz are under geared, mana effeciency > rage efficiency for you as I understand your predicament. if your tps is already superior to your raid's dps output, adding more tps will not help the healers.

but I'm with Crimson. KD pretty much all the way.

[Vold]

Thanks again for the opinions all. I guess my biggest problem with letting go of my Blade of the Unrequited is that I have this great aversion to having less health than I had before. I fully sunscribe to the damage sponge theory of BC tanking and have been the leading proponent of effective health among all the tanks I know and talk shop with in-game. Losing health, at first glance, seems counter-intuitive. Also, I've been so happy using that dagger in the past that I'm kind of partial to it.

I'd love to hear more opinions if anyone else feels inclined to weigh in.

Just one thing I want to point out:

Just two cents on the sword vrs dagger question…

Please don’t use daggers, its makes me cry when I see a warrior wield one. Yes there have been some exceptions, felstriker and that one from ssc, but all in all, you are going to do more white damage with the sword, which is more rage and more threat.

This is false. Two 87.5 dps weapons, such as the two we're discussing, will do exactly the same white damage (before itemization stats are figured in). This is regardless of whether the weapon is a sword, dagger, staff, fishing pole or even a spoon. If I were a human I'd have a very compelling case for the sword doing more white damage based on my racial, but alas, I am just a wee dwarf.

I'm also a big advocate of the "Daggers are fine for tanking" school of thought.

[Stonehoof]

Well we can definitly disagree that "daggers are fine for tanking". As I stated that are some exceptions to the agrument for or against them, as there usually is with all arguments, but every time I see a Emerald Ripper wielding "MT", where the DPS tears it off him every other second, I die a little on the inside.

Yeah I was incorrect about the white damage, I keep apply the special normalization to white dmg when I shouldn't :P