Dec 10

Since the expansion has come out there has been little to no discussion about the speed of tanking weapons other then between some of tanks in my guild and myself.  In the Burning Crusade your choice was a fast weapon or nothing else; no slow one-handed weapons with tanking stats dropped.  In Wrath of the Lich King we have a multitude of slow tanking weapon choices: there is the Crescent of Brooding Fury or the Infantry Assault Blade or even Broken Promise, all of which are 2.5 or 2.6 speed which has been completely unheard of in the days of TBC.

I’ve done a little math and some theorycrafting, and here are my findings.

  • Heroic Strike’s bonus damage does not scale with weapon speed. While your white swing will hit harder, do more damage and thus threat, the extra damage from Heroic Strike Rank 13 is still only 495.  Doing a little math here means that an average Heroic Strike with Broken Promise is roughly 1034* and with Slayer of the Lifeless is around 785*, which is a different of about 24%.  Seems like Broken Promise is the winner until you factor in that Heroic Strike eats up your next white swing, making it so that Slayer of the Lifeless hits 40% more often and therefore 40% more Heroic Strikes.
  • The faster the weapon, the more you get out of Judgement of Light. The amount of healing received from Judgement of Light is the same whether you use a 3.8 speed two-hander or dual-wield 1.5 speed daggers; JoL procs on hits.  It is safe to assume then that the faster your weapon the more often you will be proccing JoL.  More healing is good.
  • Heroic Strike is still a rage dump. If you have over 40 rage, which in Wrath is often, use Heroic Strike.  With a slower weapon you run the risk of your HS swing coming slower then incoming damage and incoming rage.  Remember that any rage over 100 is wasted damage and threat!
  • What about bigger Devastates? Devastate is a waste of a global cooldown if you’re trying to put out maximum damage (remember damage = threat) unless you are refreshing Sunders. Otherwise, use Concussion Blow or Shockwave.  If those are on cooldown, use Devastate to try to get some Sword and Board procs.

My verdict then?  Faster weapons win out, hands down.  Even if a faster weapon were to generate a little less threat, I would take one for the bonus healing recieved from Judgement of Light.

Not to mention that Slayer wins out of Broken Promise because it looks like a sword, not a dragon’s penis.

*Note: These numbers are before buffs and stats like Strength or AP.  I’m also completely discounting the other stats on both of these swords, I am merely using them as examples for speed and damage and since they are found in rougly the same tier of raiding.

Update: It figures that after I write this long tirade, I get Broken Promise instead of Slayer of the Lifeless.  The World of Warcraft gods are cruel and evil.

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