Weapon Enchant (circa 3.0.8)
There was some discussion about why I chose Agility for my Weapon Enchant on Last Laugh, so let’s take a moment and examine what Paladin’s should be doing for their weapon enchant as of Patch 3.0.8.
Looking at Petrus’ Guide to Gems and Enchants, we can see 4 major choices:
[Enchant Weapon - Accuracy] : +25 Hit Rating and Critical Strike Rating and Blue Glow : Crafted (Enchanting)
[Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Agility] : +26 Agility and Green Glow : Crafted (Enchanting)
[Enchant Weapon - Potency] : +20 Strength and Green Glow : Crafted (Enchanting)
[Titanium Weapon Chain] : +28 Hit Rating, Reduce the Duration of Disarm Effects by 50%, and White Glow : Crafted (Blacksmithing)
Let’s break these down and categorize them.
Threat Enchants: Accuracy, Potency and Weapon Chain. Recent analysis shows hit rating to be the second-best paladin threat stat.
Theck of Blackrock ran the numbers for us:
Accuracy: 27.6 DPS, 70.2 TPS Potency: 21.2 DPS, 54.8 TPS Weapon Chain: 20.3 DPS, 52.3 TPS Mongoose: 11.0 DPS, 27.3 TPS 26 Agi: 9.5 DPS, 23.7 TPS
Accuracy beats out the Weapon Chain because I don’t value disarm duration at all. I tend to agree with Veneretio's Tanking Rule-o-Thumb: "Raid bosses/encounters are all that matter. Everything else is meaningless."
Since no Raid Boss disarms, I don’t value that. That makes Accuracy the winner for threat enchants.
Avoidance Enchant: Agility
We accept that Agility provides a very small amount of mitigation through armor, and a very small amount of threat through crit. We further accept that Potency provides a very small amount of mitigation through Block Value from Strength.
Outside of my gloves, I generally do not enchant for Threat, and even on my gloves I get either an extra pulling tool (Pyro Rocket) or a small amount of Parry (Armsman).
So if you want threat from your weapon enchant, Accuracy is the way to go. Keep in mind as well that our ‘new’ taunt, Hand of Reckoning, works via hit rating and the Glyph of Righteous Defense only affects Righteous Defense. Avenger’s Shield also works on Hit. It’s only happened once, but I don’t like telling DPS to hold off because I just whiffed on throwing my Shield.
The reason I chose Agility was that I feel like I need Avoidance more than threat.
This will all be a moot discussion once 3.1 hits, if they go through with the new Enchant.
Enchant Weapon - Blade Ward *New Enchant* - Permanently enchants a weapon to sometimes grant Blade Warding when striking an enemy. Blade Warding increases your parry rating by 200 and inflicts 600 to 800 damage on your next parry. Effect can stack up to 5 times and lasts 10 sec. This enchantment requires the wielder is at least level 75
After getting excited about Titanguard (+75 stamina, then +50 stamina to weapon) on the last PTR only to see it pulled, I’m not getting too excited about Blade Ward until it goes live.
Looking at Petrus’ Guide to Gems and Enchants, we can see 4 major choices:
[Enchant Weapon - Accuracy] : +25 Hit Rating and Critical Strike Rating and Blue Glow : Crafted (Enchanting)
[Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Agility] : +26 Agility and Green Glow : Crafted (Enchanting)
[Enchant Weapon - Potency] : +20 Strength and Green Glow : Crafted (Enchanting)
[Titanium Weapon Chain] : +28 Hit Rating, Reduce the Duration of Disarm Effects by 50%, and White Glow : Crafted (Blacksmithing)
Let’s break these down and categorize them.
Threat Enchants: Accuracy, Potency and Weapon Chain. Recent analysis shows hit rating to be the second-best paladin threat stat.
Theck of Blackrock ran the numbers for us:
Accuracy: 27.6 DPS, 70.2 TPS Potency: 21.2 DPS, 54.8 TPS Weapon Chain: 20.3 DPS, 52.3 TPS Mongoose: 11.0 DPS, 27.3 TPS 26 Agi: 9.5 DPS, 23.7 TPS
Accuracy beats out the Weapon Chain because I don’t value disarm duration at all. I tend to agree with Veneretio's Tanking Rule-o-Thumb: "Raid bosses/encounters are all that matter. Everything else is meaningless."
Since no Raid Boss disarms, I don’t value that. That makes Accuracy the winner for threat enchants.
Avoidance Enchant: Agility
We accept that Agility provides a very small amount of mitigation through armor, and a very small amount of threat through crit. We further accept that Potency provides a very small amount of mitigation through Block Value from Strength.
Outside of my gloves, I generally do not enchant for Threat, and even on my gloves I get either an extra pulling tool (Pyro Rocket) or a small amount of Parry (Armsman).
So if you want threat from your weapon enchant, Accuracy is the way to go. Keep in mind as well that our ‘new’ taunt, Hand of Reckoning, works via hit rating and the Glyph of Righteous Defense only affects Righteous Defense. Avenger’s Shield also works on Hit. It’s only happened once, but I don’t like telling DPS to hold off because I just whiffed on throwing my Shield.
The reason I chose Agility was that I feel like I need Avoidance more than threat.
This will all be a moot discussion once 3.1 hits, if they go through with the new Enchant.
Enchant Weapon - Blade Ward *New Enchant* - Permanently enchants a weapon to sometimes grant Blade Warding when striking an enemy. Blade Warding increases your parry rating by 200 and inflicts 600 to 800 damage on your next parry. Effect can stack up to 5 times and lasts 10 sec. This enchantment requires the wielder is at least level 75
After getting excited about Titanguard (+75 stamina, then +50 stamina to weapon) on the last PTR only to see it pulled, I’m not getting too excited about Blade Ward until it goes live.
Comments
Don't forget it does provide a small armor enhancement (52 pre Toughness talent . . . lol) and it will give you a bit of a crit boost so your threat will go up a little bit.
Thanks for the blog Honors. See you on maintankadin.
Doogiehowser
But a helpful post from your perspective just getting back up to speed on things Paladin Tanking wise even though I'm not really playing as much as I used to.
In the scheme of things, I don't really have any threat issues, but with only around 150 hit, I end up running into a lot of pulls where AS/HOR misses. This is a real PITA and leads to a loss of time as we end up having to rez a couple overly ambitious DPS.
The addition of some avoidance with the 10 parry is simply a bonus.