Bladeward Stacks vs Mongoose

[Sandraudiga]

I've been trying to decide which enchant to go with, and so far i'm leaning towards Mongoose as a prot pally, but for one nagging doubt I cant find the answer to in the topics I am reading through.

On a target dummy, with Bladeward i've had up to 5 stacks of the buff up at once, giving me 1000 parry rating. Which is great, but the dmg of the next parry increased with each stack as well, is the very next parry comsuming the entire 5 stacks of Bladeward or does it take 1 stack away leaving 800 parry rating and a slightly decreased damage on the second successfull parry?

If it consumes it all, I have to conclude that mongoose while not quite giving the same amount of avoidance is giving a less avoidance to every incoming attack making it far superior, even discounting the armor/crit and attack haste. Even if it only consumes the one stack, is it still worth it giving that having even 2 stacks up uncommon and 3 fairly rare? Have only seen 4 and 5 stacks once, being the same 5 minute go at the target dummy. I've also heard that as a prot pally mongoose has a vey high uptime.

Opinions?

[Megatwan]

in short, blade ward is terrible. use mongoose or blood draining if your getting low alot.

i can help more and provide links if you want it but thats the skinny. it comes down to blade ward being consumed on normal parries and being wasted often.

[Dreador]

Let me Google that for you.

[Aggathon]

It honestly depends on your class. There's some posts around here somewhere that give the math for it, but basically for pally mongoose is better, for warrior bladeward is better.

[MellvarTank]

The problem with blade ward is that any parry that occurs removes a stack. I've never seen it over 1 stack, which I suppose is good (as I'm parrying a lot!) but I am also a warrior, not a paladin. From what I have read, mongoose is better for Palli's just like Agg said.

[Papapaint]

It honestly depends on your class. There's some posts around here somewhere that give the math for it, but basically for pally mongoose is better, for warrior bladeward is better.

While I respect your opinion and have seen many awesome posts from you, I have to disagree. The best math I've seen on it is here:

Tanking enchant discussion - Elitist Jerks

The first post shows Blade Ward to be .01% better, but reading the comments demonstrates just how iffy that is. It tends to boil down to what you're actually doing while tanking (raids? trash? 5-mans?) and what your current stats are. I prefer mongoose, and I know I'm not alone.

[Inaara]

Mongoose is definitely prettier.

[Lore]

The correct answer is option C: Blood Draining. It increases your survivability by far more than the other two options.

[Bodasafa]

Blood Draining for Progression Content.

Mongoose for Farm Content. If you have a backup weapon. Personally I just use my best weapon with Blood Draining all the time.

Bladeward is pretty terrible overall IMO.

[MellvarTank]

I didn't really see that much being conclusive in the math. The idea behind bladeward is that you shouldn't have "uptime". Any parry will clear the stack that you have, so unless you are dodging continually or taking hits instead of parrying then the bladeward proc should not be up. The hope would be that it only takes one proc for you to parry the next hit, in which case you would have to check a parse to see how many procs you got off of the enchant.

For example:

ICC 10 - Lord Marrowgar:

Bladeward - 22.7% uptime
43 parries - Sabre Lash
5 parries - Melee
10 parries - Bone Storm

20 Bladeward Procs

Trial of the Crusader 10 - Northerend Beasts:

13.1% Uptime on Bladeward
20 parries - Melee

11 Bladeward procs

Trial of the Crusader 10 - Jarraxxus (Adds):

20 parries - Melee

4 Bladeward Procs

I just grabbed these quickly from a few logs I had.

[Insahnity]

Paladin perspective on mongoose

Aside from having an agi->dodge conversion rate second only to druids, it can proc off seal of vengeance/blood (and I mean, ANY So/BV, be it one application or five, it hits just as frequently). SoV/B is stupidly easy to apply, it goes on 3 people with HotR, and 6 seconds later, it's likely at least one different mob will get hit with one of the HotR, applying it on a different spot. Therefore, Uptime for mongoose = insane for paladins. Bears can only hope to compete by tab lacerating, which is doable but slower than paladins.

Warriors and DKs have a lousy agi-Dodge conversion, but I'm assuming it works off Deep wounds? But I am not sure about disease ticks...

[Aggathon]

Deep wounds doesn't crit for prot warriors. Either that or my 1199 deep wounds ticks never criting is the worst RNG ever. World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Also, I found the thread that did all the bladewarding math and log parses:
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/5...ng-logs-3.html
I only skimmed it, but basically it says after 3.2 blade warding became better, iirc. There's another one out there somewhere that I don't have time to nail down atm, it came to the same conclusion that bladeward was better for warriors.

[Dreador]

Maybe I'm missing something, having not read the tooltip in a while, but doesn't blood draining require you to have a bleed or other DoT up to work? What about tanks using the 5/15/51 survivability spec in that case?

[Aggathon]

Formula: Enchant Weapon - Blood Draining - Item - World of Warcraft <- when striking an enemy OR a bleed effect. Since SoV counts as a hit (and can proc mongoose etc.) I think they wanted it to be even for warriors and bears (lacerate is a bleed right? I bear tanking stupid) so they added that in there.
Idk, point is it doesn't require a bleed, it just can also proc off of a bleed.

[Dreador]

I suppose that's acceptable then. I might grab it on one of my other weps. Currently running with Titanguard - Mongoose, but I have Rimefang's too, might throw BD on it, perhaps Last Laugh. I don't have anything from TOC or the Bone Scepter yet.

[Theblueblurr]

Not sure which is the better enchant i tried mongoose prior to and during ulduar but then late ulduar and on into icc ive been running blade ward and have noticed a huge difference in survivability! i often look over and see the stacks fluctuating on and off procing a ton! i wonder if it is in part due to me having the onixyas blood talisman for the increased parry but i always got blade ward for my pally tanking.

[Taio]

Only slightly off-topic... but from what I'm reading, for my paladin: Blood Draining on Quel'Serrar for EH, Mongoose on Rimefang's for avoidance?

[krc]

I would use Blood Draining on Quel'Serrar for EH but I think in an avoidance set Blade Warding adds slightly more avoidance, but Mongoose also adds armor and a more reliable uptime but it is an avoidance set so I would take the enchant that gives you the most avoidance. Another thing to consider if you are low on gold is that Blade Warding is only slightly better and you are going to be using an avoidance set very little while if you go with Mongoose you can also save loads of gold and have your enchant be slightly more all purpose.

[Minibell]

I've done progression with both Mongoose and Blood Draining. My preference is Mongoose because of the very high uptime and the boost to stats that I care about mitigation and avoidance. However I missed TOC10C/TOC25C so my getting insanely low health generally indicates a bigger probelm then SOP.

[steadymobn]

mongoose for me


marrowgar 50% uptime

festergutt 60% uptime



i'll that those numbers anyday