Mongoose over Blood Draining?

[Badga]

Mongoose is better. End of discussion, the situations in which you find yourself dropping below 35% health is going to be way less frequent than the amount of uptime that mongoose is up. Throughout a fight it has a average of 30% uptime, and is based on the rate at which you hit the boss as well. Faster weapons = stronger the enchant. Blood Draining... not so much it is controlled based on when you take damage, the better your gear gets the worse the enchant gets. I don't really need to go into much more detail, its just a stronger avoidance stat and overall better.

[Kojiyama]

Pre-3.2 Blade Warding was quite lackluster, however now with the rating changes there is probably a point where Blade Warding could be better than Mongoose.

For instance, for Xav's gear he might actually get a bit more out of Blade Warding due to the fact that his Parry Rating is so low compared to his Dodge Rating--722 vs. 208. (He's actually reached the point where his Dodge DR is greater than the Parry DR and lower scaling, so point for point Parry is better.)

So, I'd say that all 3 enchants have a role, but are both situational. Personally I like Blood Draining as the extra buffer on my health is useful in many cases. However, I may change at some point to an avoidance enchant once I hit the 50k raid-buffed HP mark soon.

[theholyfx]

You would have to be stacking nothing but parry for blade ward to give less avoidance than mongoose, and thats with blade ward at just one stack...

[Kabonk]

For the sake of completeness:
Mongoose does not just provide dodge.
It provides Armor, Haste, Crit and also Dodge.

In other words:
Mongoose provides Threat, EH and Avoidance.

If I only had one weapon to enchant I would be only interested in the EH part of it.

For mongoose, with the uptimes I had over the 5 raids that I used to calculate it, Mongoose would give me something between 100 to 110 armor each raid during boss-encounters.

If a boss is capable of two-hitting me without both enchants I would prefare Mongoose.
If a boss needs 4 or more Hits in a row to kill me, I would prefare Blooddraining.

But luckily I got 3 weapons.
2 with mongoose (1 for threat, 1 for armor)
1 with blooddraining

[cael]

I realize 2k heal isn't going to save you from boss blows, however isn't it useful for when your real low and ae or some incidental damage is hitting you?

[Karilyn]

For the sake of completeness:
Mongoose does not just provide dodge.
It provides Armor, Haste, Crit and also Dodge.

In other words:
Mongoose provides Threat, EH and Avoidance.

If I only had one weapon to enchant I would be only interested in the EH part of it.

For mongoose, with the uptimes I had over the 5 raids that I used to calculate it, Mongoose would give me something between 100 to 110 armor each raid during boss-encounters.

Okay, I understand effective health is king.

But are you seriously going to try and argue that 100 armor is better than nearly 1% more avoidance you would get from using Blade Ward?

If you think Mongoose is good, you are still living in BC. Realize that fully raid buffed, Mongoose only gives you around 0.45% avoidance when it procs at level 80. It is nowhere even remotely close to the 4% that it was giving back at level 70.

[Catteeka]

People mistakenly assume several things whenever they bash blood draining: that you're going from 100% to <35% in one hit, that bosses hit for constant amounts at constant intervals and that healing is the same way. Don't think I need to explain why those things have little to no basis in reality. Blood draining is far from useless as many claim, and it will save you.

[Naissa]

People mistakenly assume several things whenever they bash blood draining: that you're going from 100% to <35% in one hit, that bosses hit for constant amounts at constant intervals and that healing is the same way. Don't think I need to explain why those things have little to no basis in reality. Blood draining is far from useless as many claim, and it will save you.

This.

[Blue]

I won't even try to argue the math, as I'm hopelessly deficient in all but general concepts. However, I do have anecdotal evidence of Blood Drain goodness, for what it's worth.

First Boss in HGundrak...healer snake-wrapped (yes, we were trying to just burn him down, for the thrill of the kill), boss still at 5%. Everyone else died, from AOE damage w/no heals...I popped all my trinks, pots, Last Stand, etc. Delivered killing blow, after more than a minute of soloing Boss (my dps is only fair, after all).

Everyone cheering me on, I gazed at screen, as the Words "Blood Drain" faded.

I may change my enchant tomorrow, but, for now, I'm satisfied with this one...

Oh, and, even better...my healer, the one who was snake-wrapped? I cut him out of the snakes, he was dead, so I hit him with my goblin jumper cables--and they worked!! Even bandaged him some..."There, you feel better now, healer?" Mwahaha..

---Note: Apologies, I'm repeating myself, with this story, from another thread...they say the, what was it--memory, yes...first thing to go...

[Superspy23]

Actual log breakdowns of Blade Ward before the parry buff and dodge nerf.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/5...ding-logs.html

[Stompya]

a chance to proc a small increase in your chance to avoid a hit, or a sure fire small heal when you dip too low and need all the additional healing you can get?

hmmm, a very tough question this is...

[Kojiyama]

Actual log breakdowns of Blade Ward before the parry buff and dodge nerf.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/5...ding-logs.html

Blade Warding's uptime is misleading, however.

Since the proc is consumed on any parry, your 'normal' parries will remove the buff--even if statistically many of those parries were not caused by the proc. Since the proc never has a chance to be 'used' in those cases (the TPS portion does, but the avoidance doesn't) it is thus 'wasted' in many cases.

I'm working with someone to properly model Blade Warding mathematically, as it is actually very complex due to its mechanics.

[Barlos]

According to this WoL parse from premonition, Xav had 42% uptime on mongoose. According to rawr, 120 agi only adds 1.02% dodge to my character (I took off any trinkets or weapon enchants that would mess with the dodge and replaced some stam gems with agi until i got 120 additional agi). Which means mongoose is roughly equivalent to .42% dodge. I currently use Blade Ward because after 3.2 came out it was said somewhere on tankspot (cant remember the exact thread) that Blade Ward gives more avoidance than mongoose now. I checked some of my guilds WoL reports (I cant link them here unfortunately because they are not publicly viewable) and on our last heroic jaraxxus kill the parse showed 22.2% parries. I didn't pop any trinkets and the parry on my character tooltip shows 21.48% meaning Blade Ward gave me .72% avoidance for the fight. I understand that the parse wont necessarily always agree with the character window simply because of RNG, but its gotta be damn close.

Anyway, the reason I even looked into this is because I noticed xav and some other high end tanks still used mongoose. Now, unless I got crazy RNG on that fight, I dont see any reason to use mongoose over Blade Ward unless you really like that 240 armor it gives.

This is extremely uninformed. There is no reliable way to test the effectiveness of Blade Ward. Every time you Parry and it eats the Blade Ward buff, you can never know whether or not Blade Ward caused you to Parry OR your innate chance to Parry without Blade Ward did. It's a pretty poorly designed enchant, and although the idea behind it was good in that it would give us some variety, it ultimately falls short with the mechanic of the buff it gives.

I have, on the other hand, anywhere from 35 to 45% uptime or so on Mongoose. I prefer the "stability" of Mongoose to other tanking enchants, including Blood Draining. I'm not overly impressed with Blood Draining, and this is not to say I don't understand how it works. However, the low uptime on a fully-stacked Blood Draining, and the sheer unimpressiveness of the actual heal most of the time, just makes it overall very unappealing to me.

The only realistic way of "testing" Blood Draining is to not even use it. Then, check your logs for all of your deaths for an entire night. Check the overkills on each hit, and then check to see if Blood Draining would have procced before that hit. Also note that you would be banking on Blood Draining having been fully stacked at this point, so you'll want to check the past 30 seconds-1 minute of combat beforehand to see if you dropped low enough in health to proc it before the time you died. If so, chances are it wouldn't have saved you anyways because it wouldn't be stacked fully from the last time the charges were consumed.

On paper Blood Draining seems great, but in practice there are way too many variables for it to work out ultimately as the community claims it does or wants it to. An "auto-cast" health stone sounds great, but it doesn't mean Blood Draining works out the way you'd hope. I hope we all can at least agree that Blade Ward is absolutely terrible, though.

[Karilyn]

Since the proc is consumed on any parry, your 'normal' parries will remove the buff--even if statistically many of those parries were not caused by the proc. Since the proc never has a chance to be 'used' in those cases (the TPS portion does, but the avoidance doesn't) it is thus 'wasted' in many cases.

That is the wrong way to look at it.

You could just as easily say that if you have 24% dodge, and you get 1% dodge from Mongoose (just to use some made up numbers), then if you dodge an attack, there was only a 4% chance that dodge came from Mongoose.

It doesn't matter if the Blade Ward's Parry was dispelled due to Blade Ward's bonus Parry or not. It's the same thing either way.

Both enchants are filling up the combat table. Stop overcomplicating it.

All you have to do to accurately calculate Blade Ward, is do the following things...

1. Calculate Blade Ward's average uptime based on the boss's swing timer
2. Repeat step 1 for each of the five levels that Blade Ward can stack.
3. Calculate up the frequency of the buff reaching each level of the stacking.
4. Average out the 5 stacks, relative to their average duration before dispelling and their frequency.

It's really not that hard, it only takes around 3-4 minutes of spreadsheet work to figure it out if you already know how much Parry that Blade Ward will grant you per stack level.

Here's a hint for those of you who haven't yet done the math: Blade Ward absolutely destroys Mongoose on single targets.

If you think Mongoose is better than Blade Ward, you haven't done the math, and YOU ARE WRONG.

[BoomBeef]

As you guys continue the comparative argument, I thought I would just throw in the fact you can carry 2 weapons. Be situation-ally prepared. Study your parses from a night of HEROIC beatings and get some healer feedback too.

[Hamburglar]

One would think the impact of a 2k heal when you could possibly need it would outweigh 240 armor and 1% dodge you would get from mongoose. If you've ever found yourself barely alive and you have blood draining on your weapon there is a good chance the enchant saved your ass.

Even if let's say blood draining only has 1-2 stacks, that is a 400-800 heal when you absolutely need it and it can crit for double healing. Does the 240 armor and slight bit of dodge outweigh even a 400hp heal when you fall below 35%?

[Karilyn]

Study your parses from a night of HEROIC beatings and get some healer feedback too.

Why do you need to parse Mongoose and Blade Ward, when both are easily calculated on a spreadsheet?

That's like saying you have to separately parse two items, one with bonus armor and one with stamina to figure out which one gives you more effective health.

...

Blood Draining on the other hand isn't easily calculated by a spreadsheet, because the only way to figure out it's actual benefit is by simulating multiple healers healing you, each with a different healing rotation, combined with simulating different damage from a boss smacking you, and seeing how it all works out. Run a few hundred simulated hours would be much more accurate than attempting to parse it.

[Kojiyama]

All you have to do to accurately calculate Blade Ward, is do the following things...

1. Calculate Blade Ward's average uptime based on the boss's swing timer
2. Repeat step 1 for each of the five levels that Blade Ward can stack.
3. Calculate up the frequency of the buff reaching each level of the stacking.
4. Average out the 5 stacks, relative to their average duration before dispelling and their frequency.

It's really not that hard, it only takes around 3-4 minutes of spreadsheet work to figure it out if you already know how much Parry that Blade Ward will grant you per stack level.

Actually, it isn't quite that simple.

As the uptime and stacking are affected by two completely different things--that being your swing speed/proc rate and the boss's attack speed (and parry trigger rate).

Realistically, it is very hard to easily model or even parse the actual effect. If you can do it in 3-4 minutes on a spreadsheet, then by all means I'm sure people would appreciate it if you post edsomething so it can be looked over for accuracy and reference.

Given the number of potential outcomes, though, I'd imagine it would need to be a little bigger an amount of work though.

[craggan]

Enchant lowering damages taken all along a fight are always better than an enchant that "probably" heal ...
From what I know, Blood draining has never saved my life.

Healing is healers duty, not our weapons'.

[chucko]

Blade Warding's uptime is misleading, however.

Since the proc is consumed on any parry, your 'normal' parries will remove the buff--even if statistically many of those parries were not caused by the proc. Since the proc never has a chance to be 'used' in those cases (the TPS portion does, but the avoidance doesn't) it is thus 'wasted' in many cases.

I'm working with someone to properly model Blade Warding mathematically, as it is actually very complex due to its mechanics.

This.