Dagger tanking?

[AxLxExX]

i thought I read somewhere that tanking with a dagger is worse than tanking with a 1h...true?

[Petninja]

Honestly I've never tested it. What I do know is that 1H weapons (axes, maces, swords) normalize at a slower speed than daggers. The only reason fast weapons are used for tanking is so we can burn rage faster with heroic strike (and more even white damage to a lesser extent). The faster the normalization speed the less Devastate will do. Basically you are trading devastate threat for hstrike threat. I've never been in a situation where a Hstrike faster than 1.6-1.7 could ever matter.

[robowarriorx]

Well, I personally find that the faster the weapon, the better the threat, in terms of my own experience. I tank with a 1.4 speed sword, still put up close to 700+ dps easy, and no one pulls aggro, so it stands to reason a dagger should work well.

[Grakkur]

Well, I personally find that the faster the weapon, the better the threat, in terms of my own experience. I tank with a 1.4 speed sword, still put up close to 700+ dps easy, and no one pulls aggro, so it stands to reason a dagger should work well.

Read the above post. A 1.4 dagger would produce less threat than a 1.4 sword.

[Krashtork]

I've tanked with daggers before, they are good for situations where you are tanking 2 things with unlimited rage. Hello cleave spam!

[Grakkur]

That'd be the same argument as picking imp. spell reflect: "It might be useful in that one situation out of 50!"

I have also used daggers on occasion and generally they are not worth the trouble. If you go on needing one it should be because it is a replacement that outranks your current weapon by a mile, and noone else wants it.

[minrog]

For some brief periods I used the 3 gem socket dagger from Kara with 12 stam gems in there. (Blade of the Unrequited iirc)

It sucks for threat because of the Devastate normalization when you compare it to a sword/axe/mace.

[Nicki]

Dagger is not necessarily a dirty word - TankSpot

its a bit out of date but hey

[mvrander]

Baring in mind that devestate is a much smaller component of the total threat generation now than it was pre 3.0 does that sway things less away from daggers?

Revenge isn't normalised is it?

[Satorri]

Revenge, Shield Slam, Concussive Blow, Shockwave are all standalone damage.

Heroic Strike and Cleave are bonus damage/effect on next swing.

Devastate is weapon damage based.

You lose some damage/threat for using a dagger instead of a different 1-hander. For my money, is it really worth trading 0.2-0.4 sec to go from a fast sword/axe/mace to a fast dagger? If you found a dagger with better stats/damage than your other options while leveling or starting off gear, it's probably not the end of the world, but beyond that, I wouldn't be searching out daggers.

[kolben]

Pre-TBC and pre-Devastate, really fast daggers in the 1.3-1.5 range were fantastic for aggro weapons. You could pretty much macro a Sunder and a Heroic Strike together and spam that till doomsday and be fine. Today I wouldn't advise it, just about any quality < 2.0 speed 1hander is going to outperform a dagger.

... However. A case could be made for the odd dagger that has more than one socket for a very specific set of gear, like Blade of the Unrequited - Item - World of Warcraft. The added gem slots may make something like a very high dodge set, or uncrushable set easier to complete.

[Rootkitworm]

I've read on here that daggers are only worth using if the Dps/iLevel on it is significantly higher than your other tanking weapon.

[Glomgore]

Humans - Use a mace/sword
Dwarfs - Mace
Orcs - Axe

Other races - anything but a dagger.

Dagger DPS tends to be VERY high, but low damage ranges.

Just because we use Devastate LESS often than we used too, still doesn't mean it isn't our GOTO skill when in low rage situations, starting fights, to stack sunders.

Stay away from those daggers, any tanking wep <1.8 is a good wep. 1.8 should be about the slowest you want to go.

Personally, I find the 1.6-1.8 range best for my playstyle, slightly slower heroic strikes, but it helps me keep track of my other skills when not spamming that damn heroic strike, plus, at times when I'm NOT using heroic strike to build rage, I feel rage comes in at a larger chunk, allowing me to use devastate, without having to wait for another white swing to get rage. Sooner you can use devastate, sooner your S+B procs, and thus starting your ideal rotation.

[Satrina]

It's (still) an overstated problem. From a previous thread:

Namlak's Supernumerary Sticker vs. Red Sword of Courage

Say I have 2600AP (+186DPS).

Dagger:
Average damage is 215, speed is 1.5
186DPS normalises to 316 damage per hit. Non-normalised, it's 278

Weapon damage will be (316 + 215) 531. Half weapon damage is 266. Add 505 (101 damage per Sunder stack from Devastate) and we get 771 damage from Devastate

Devastate threat is damage + 5% AP, yielding 771 + 130 = 901 threat for a Devastate from the dagger.

Sword:
Average damage is 229, speed is 1.6
186DPS normalises to 446 damage per hit. Non-normalised, 297

Weapon damage will be (446 + 229) 675. Half weapon damage is 338. Add 505 (101 damage per Sunder stack from Devastate) and we get 843 damage from Devastate

Devastate threat is damage + 5% AP, yielding 843 + 130 = 973 threat for a Devastate from the sword

Net difference against an equal iLevel epic sword is 72 damage (and threat) per Devastate, about 24TPS. (Worst case of a SS Rev Dev Dev cycle, less if SnB procs and takes a Dev out of the loop)

Not as bad as people make it out to be, by any means. Yeah, you ideally want to use a sword/axe/mace but if all you can find is a dagger that's way better than your current blue thing, there's no reason to not use it.

[Petninja]

Satrina... I... I... I think I love you.

[mavfin]

That'd be the same argument as picking imp. spell reflect: "It might be useful in that one situation out of 50!"

I have also used daggers on occasion and generally they are not worth the trouble. If you go on needing one it should be because it is a replacement that outranks your current weapon by a mile, and noone else wants it.

Which is exactly how I ended up tanking with the Moroes dagger for quite a while, till something else dropped. It was a HUGE amount better than what I had, so dagger or not, it was better.

[holmedog]

Yeah, but don't forget, if you tank with Prince's dagger, it will make rogues /cry!

(seriously, I keep that dagger just for that reason. It was going to be sharded, anyway)

[Andenthal]

This reply is based solely on the topic and OP's post:

Only tank with a Dagger if you have a matching purse to go with it.