WOW - Warrior Tanking Weapons
Monday, September 17th, 2007 - 1:07pm
So, pre BC, warrior tanking weapons were considered good if they were fast so you could spam heroic strike to dump rage when you were all filled up. Now, with the devastate ability, it would seem that it's better to have a bigger slower weapon since it's an instant attack that does 50% of weapon damage. Anyone have any practical experience with this issue?
I don't know if the neighbors will be able to put up with my girl-like screams in the middle of the night.- LiquidMantis
Blyvie - 70 Protection Warrior Klios - 70 Fire Mage
Xavina - 70 Resto Druid Miristaa - 70 Enh Sham
I thought that was reversed and you wanted slower weapons. I'll hush now and let more informed people chime in.
Gamer Tag: Rantyr
Now - Bigger Slow Weapon
Used to be - Smaller Quick Weapon
I was still under the impression that I should have a quick weapon, but my brain kicked in last night and it would seem that it's better to have a slow weapon now. I just recently got back into this, so I'm slowly changing some of the ideas that used to be true until BC happened.
I don't know if the neighbors will be able to put up with my girl-like screams in the middle of the night.- LiquidMantis
Blyvie - 70 Protection Warrior Klios - 70 Fire Mage
Xavina - 70 Resto Druid Miristaa - 70 Enh Sham
All the tanking weapons in BC are fast.. 1.6-1.8 speed.
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
http://www.myspace.com/armyofthepharaohs
You need a rage dump, so I would think a fast weapon for Heroic Strike was good. At least that is what I used for tanking pre-BC.
Why would I want a fast weapon if mostly everything I am doing is an instant? Sunders are instant, revenge isn't weapon damage based but is instant, devastate is instant, shield attacks are instant. I could see how the rage building would be steadier with quick weapon because it trickles in at a more steady rate, but wouldn't rage dumping via devastate do more for you as far as keeping aggro and damage? Or is it when you start to fill up, you should be devastating as well as heroic striking? I haven't been trying to rage dump with devastate and shield slam for very long, so maybe it really isn't as effective as it would first seem.
The fast weapons have lower damage ranges on them, so I would be doing more damage based on a slow 50 dps weapon as opposed to a fast 50 dps weapon with instant attacks. That is more pertinent to my thinking than the actual speed of the weapon.
Also, I am genuinely open to trying to understand this, not trying to convince anyone that this is necessarily correct. Is it just the the weapons with +stam +def and such happen to be fast weapons?
I don't know if the neighbors will be able to put up with my girl-like screams in the middle of the night.- LiquidMantis
Blyvie - 70 Protection Warrior Klios - 70 Fire Mage
Xavina - 70 Resto Druid Miristaa - 70 Enh Sham
Given that fast weapons are still oriented around tanking stats, I'd suggest going with them just for that reason. As for which is better in terms of damage, obviously slower weapons are going to give bigger numbers on your attacks. However, if you're in a situation where you need to be dumping rage, then HS is your outlet, and you need to be getting that off as often as possible, which is going to require a faster weapon.
Overall though, my understanding of warrior tanking is that it's less about damage dealt and more about threat pushed. In other words, if you're pushing 800-1000 TPS, then it doesn't matter if you're doing 5dps. And no, those numbers have no basis in fact, just there for argument's sake.
wordsmythe wrote:
Podunk on Jessica Alba wrote:
Alright, thanks guys. I haven't hit one of the weapons that screams "tank with me!" yet. Hopefully, it will be soon.
I don't know if the neighbors will be able to put up with my girl-like screams in the middle of the night.- LiquidMantis
Blyvie - 70 Protection Warrior Klios - 70 Fire Mage
Xavina - 70 Resto Druid Miristaa - 70 Enh Sham
http://www.wow-loot.com/warrior.htm#builds
They've got a pretty good coverage of the ideals for tanking and such. There's also a pretty good gear build tool that gives you a stat total of the gear you're picking. It's not 100% comprehensive, at least I don't think it is, so there might be a piece here or there you know you can replace with something better. However, I find it's a good place to start.
wordsmythe wrote:
Podunk on Jessica Alba wrote:
Basically, Crystalline Kopesh was the first Tank Sword that I ran into, then the King's Defender or the Sun Eater depending on whether KZ or Heroics are more your style.
The Kopesh IS 2.1, which is pretty slow compared to the other two, which are both 1.6.
It's good to rely on your instants, but one of the big adjustments I had to make was using Heroic Strike more often. I open with Shield Slam and then some Sunders with my shouts mixed in, but after I'm to the point where I can use Devastate, sure, I'm using it because it's hella awesome, but I'm still sure to have a Heroic Strike up every few swings - it's still a great aggro generator, and when you're getting hit by Prince or Gruul or the like, you're going to have quite a bit of rage to burn through.
XBox Live Gamertag: Warlockbert
Try to get Gromtor's Charge (reward), then King's Defender or Sun Eater for the best pre/post Gruul tanking weapons in BC.
I believe the weapon speed normalization took care of the age old dilemma of fast versus slow weapons, but as a general feel i prefer tanking with faster weapons as it seems sunders stack quicker. Hit rating is very important too.
Still, the most fun I get out of tanking is stacking a ton of block gear and using shield slam. Of course they are no where near DPS numbers, but getting that extra 1,300-1,500 crit on a slam helps the threat
XBL/Swat R2 SPORE/Swatr2 WAR/Nephlokan
I'm still pretty unimpressed with devastate. Even with a 5 stack of sunders it doesn't produce that much threat. Heroic Strike is better for my threat generation personally (despite the fact it isn't instant). Testing with KTM I can stabilize in the 650-700 TPS range (with no devastates). With a few crits and no misses I can spike at 1000 TPS for brief periods before it stabilizes back in the 700 range again (again no devastate). Throwing devastate in the mix doesn't really change things much (if anything it lowers my TPS). For snap aggro it's much weaker than HS/Sunder.
We had a tank in our guild that was having aggro generating problems. After talking with him he was really relying on getting the 5 sunder stack and starting in with devastates. Now I talked him in to implementing more HS into his routine and his aggro generation has improved exponentially.
All in all I just don't think devastate works the way the tooltip claims it does.
As far as weaponry goes, since I'm such an advocate of HS I think fast weapons still have the advantage for me. I think the Kings Defender will probably last me well until the tanking mace out of SSC. Before KD I was using the Sun Eater and before that Gromtar's was a fantastic option. I even experimented with Latro's Shifting Sword some with decent results.
"Fault always lies in the same place...with those foolish enough to lay blame"*
-Cort
*Unless you're Amazon or Funcom, in which case, SCREW YOU.
Thanks for all of the input guys. I just put the threat meter on yesterday so hadn't been using that to test my actual threat generation with it. I appreciate all of the comments as they point me along a much better path.
I don't know if the neighbors will be able to put up with my girl-like screams in the middle of the night.- LiquidMantis
Blyvie - 70 Protection Warrior Klios - 70 Fire Mage
Xavina - 70 Resto Druid Miristaa - 70 Enh Sham
Don't listen to Warlock, he can't stay alive on Gruul past 18 growths.
Rogue
Mage
Fast weapons are still the way to go for tanking. The difference in devastate threat is minimal, but the ability to really push out burst threat with a fast weapon by spamming heroic strike alongside your normal threat (cooldown) abilities can make or break a fight. And generally, the further you progress in PvE, the more rage you get to play with, so the more you get out of this.
Slow weapons are better in a rage-starved environment. E.g when you're offtanking and trying to stay just below the MT on threat in some fights. Or when you're dual wielding as protection to DPS (someone else tanking) or grind - this is when you want the most damage possible out of devastate.
So ideally you want both a slow DPS weapon and a fast tanking weapon which you use according to the situation.
Maybe if you could l2dps, we would get him down before then.
XBox Live Gamertag: Warlockbert