Okay, WoW geeks

[alpharaposa]

anher and I have been participating in a weekly ZG raid. The raid handles items by giving each regular participant a short wish list. If an items drops on your wish list, and it's higher on yours than anybody else's, you get the item. Period. Items not on any wish lists get rolled for.

(It's a long-enough running raid that a lot of items get rolled for, which is nice for us.)

I've already obtained all three of my primal items, the Zulian Scepter, and Peacekeeper Gauntlets. Great stuff! But now, I'm looking at the wish list. And I'm torn. I appeal to the fellow WoW geeks on my list to help me figure out the pros and cons.

I want a good tanking weapon. There are two excellent weapons that drop off of Hakkar that would be great for pally tanking. These are:

Bloodcaller
Bloodlord's Defender

Bloodcaller has +15 int and +spell damage. Pally tanking relies upon spell damage to generate aggro. Intellect, of course, means more mana, more crits, all that good stuff.

Bloodlord's Defender has no int, but has 80 armor, higher DPS, and +4 def. Defense and armor are both vital tanking stats, and higher DPS is always a bonus. Its stamina is a little higher, too, which means more hit points.

So... Bloodcaller would make keeping aggro easier. The Defender would let me take less damage. Both of these are good things to keep in mind for tanking. So far, I have the Defender down on my wishlist, but I can change that at any time before the next raid.

Comments

[zilvar.livejournal.com]

Leave Bloodcaller for a dps caster. It's one of the 3 or 4 best one-handed dps caster weapons available. Even as a pally, your primary tanking stats are Stamina and Defense and Armor, stats that the bloodlord's defender provide.

Int is, of course, helpful, but you're more likely to get what you need from shield and armor rather than the sword. The spell damage is a little more iffy because I'm not sure what multiplier is applied to paladin spells, but most of them are instant or 1.5s cast times (as I recall), and probably go off the 43% value. As such, the total effect of the sword shouldn't be all that helpful to you.

Not having played a pally tank, I assume righteous fury is your tanking ability of choice. 60% of 43% of 33 just isn't a huge upgrade, and the 15 int probably isn't even one spell.

My money, for tanking, is always on the Bloodlord's Defender (which drops from Mandokir, actually, not Hakkar). It's simply designed for it.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

As I am a protection spec'd pally, I have points to raise the Righteous Fury boost to 90%, which changes things a little bit (and makes consecration one great aggro gaining tool). Still, all your points are well taken.

[traveller-blues.livejournal.com]

I'd go the other way, honestly. You aren't always going to be the tank, and as one of the few 'utility' classes, it's good to be good at both. While doing Thekhal, 33 points per heal might've made all the difference, and we had a helluva time on Mandikar with a lack of solid ranged DPS.

My take is 'the more damage you can do, the faster you take them down, the less likely they do damage to your party.'

But of course, Hordeside only has one class that can wear plate, so we were concentrating on the focus fire aspect and healing to prop up our tanks.

-Traveller

[zilvar.livejournal.com]

Thing is, the pally already has the Zulian Scepter for healing. 26 heal (with some mp5) should cover that need very well. Not to say that bloodcaller isn't a stronger weapon (sure it is...epic vs. blue, similar ilvl), but for a prot pally, I can't see that it really adds a great deal of value over what she's already got.

In that position, I'd probably hold onto the scepter until I could get an Aurastone, and/or Finkles (probably a distant future, but not unreachable)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

IMO your aggro holding will go better from Bloodcaller, the armor and defense are fairly negligible since paladins don't really have much in the way of that to begin with.

The increased damage from Bloodlord's Defender will only help if you use Seal of Command, or in the expansion, Crusader Strike, with it. If you go with physical damage to hold aggro, you are going to need a lot of physical DPS/tanking gear.

IMO you'll benefit more from Bloodcaller.