Best WotLK Weapon Enchant for Protection Paladins

Jan 28, 09 Best WotLK Weapon Enchant for Protection Paladins

NOTICE: This post will con­tin­u­ously be updated to reflect the lat­est changes to Pro­tec­tion Pal­adins in World of Warcraft.

Changelog:

01/04/10 – Updated for patch 3.3

01/28/09 – Ini­tial post


Things are pretty sim­ple. We Pro­tec­tion Pal­adins have only 4 viable enchants to put on our weapons. I will sim­ply put them in the order of my pref­er­ence, as I’m not going to fill your head with num­bers and calculations:

Enchant Weapon — Blood Drain­ing > Enchant Weapon – Accu­racy or Tita­nium Weapon Chain (don’t use this if you’re hit capped or put this first if you’re not) > Enchant Weapon – Potency

These would be my options for the best weapon enchant for Pro­tec­tion Pal­adins. Found any bet­ter options? Please state your opin­ions, I’m always opened to discussions.

Edit: fol­low this link over at Fer­raro for more accu­rate expla­na­tions.

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44 Comments

  1. I heartily agree with you on your choice of BC Potency as the best pos­si­ble weapon enchant. It’s my favourite and what I enchant my weapons with. I just wanted to men­tion the fact that Tita­nium Weapon chains are a viable option if you’re look­ing for a lit­tle bit of hit and are con­cerned about being dis­armed (pro­vided you aren’t specced into Pur­suit of Justice).

    As a tiny note, 535 is the crit cap for hero­ics, not 530. ;x

    • Thanks, I’ll edit that right away, slipped like I first wrote 450 for raids >.<

  2. Thorogar /

    You might want to add that Agi adds dodge also.
    This is the main rea­son many peo­ple have Agi on their tank­ing weapon. (I myself have a tita­nium weapon chain.)

  3. Nyrin /

    I use the AGI enchant cur­rently but with recent gear upgrades i have been think­ing about going back to TBC potency or even mon­goose. i really hope they imple­ment a new tank­ing weapon enchant soon, I (we) feel pretty left out!!

  4. Vy /

    Ok I see ppl all around say­ing that agility adds up dodge aswell but…I can’t see that any­where on my pal­adin page. It only says armor and crit. I know it’s like that for war­riors and druids but might it be that pal­adins work slightly dif­fer­ent? Or does it use a detour (as in not adding directly towards it)?

  5. I run with Agility as well. And yes it does add Dodge. But can I tell the dif­fer­ence between Dam­age Taken with Str vs Agi.… not really. I use Agi because its a stat I can see the ben­e­fit from. Str is a hid­den Block mod­i­fier and I never trust some­thing I can­not see.

  6. Thorogar /

    Agility: 1 Agility = 2 armor. It’s also a decent source for dodge and crit.

    Source: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/viewtopic.php?t=15212

    And, as far as I remem­ber, Pal­adin even ben­e­fit more from Agility than War­riors. At least, it used to be this way. What­ever, I still don’t gem/enchant for Agi.

    Greet­ings

    Thorogar

  7. I use a Tita­nium Weapon Chain as well, mostly because I am too lazy to re-enchant it with potency.

  8. Tep,

    Is there an RSS feed URL on your site that I can sub­scribe to? I would like to link it on my site.

  9. dark /

    Every­one says the spell power enchant is not good anymore…yet i find that when i change between my titansteel bonecrusher with 50 ap and titansteel guardian with 50 spell my con­se­crate aura does more dam­age. Confused?

    • No, not at all.

      Consecration’s for­mula looks like [ 32% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 904 ] for rank 8 acord­ing to MMO-Champion.

      Guardian has 457 Spell Power, Bonecrusher has only 140 Attack Power.

      It’s only nor­mal that it does more damage.

      But I think you’re miss­ing the point. Spell dam­age enchant only means a lit­tle more threat which at the moment is seri­ously not an issue. Any other enchant (STR, AGI, etc.) means more avoid­ance which I’m sure you’ll agree will ben­e­fit us more.

      • Dark /

        I agree mit­i­ga­tion takes preference…but I can sit with 20 dodge / 16.8 parry / 31.1 shield with def cap…or i can sit with 24 dodge / 17.3 parry / and 25.5 shield block for bet­ter dodge. With either sets of gear I have at least 29K unbuffed…I have yet to actu­ally use a def tank­ing weapon yet…or to find a 1 han­der that can up my threat per sec as high as the spell weapons…In most cases I agree with not being able to touched in threat generation…but every now and then there are cer­tain boss fights that good war­locks can give me a run…I’d like to have that lit­tle extra threat gen­er­a­tion and the scal­ing on ap and spell lets me get more threat from spell at the moment.

  10. Hey, nice tips. Per­haps I’ll buy a glass of beer to that man from that forum who told me to go to your site :)

  11. Karess /

    Proud bearer of a Last Laugh with spell power enchant. lawl.

    Some­day when I find some­one on my pathetic server who has 20 strength I might switch.

    Until then I do like the smidge bit of higher dmg on my spells for burst TPS on pick up.

    Maybe that’s an incor­rect assump­tion. Look­ing for a new enchant either way.

  12. alex /

    i’m a prot paly Raid­ing Ulduar25, using Titansteel Guardian with spell enchant, over def cap, over 30k UNBUFFED, (thats over 40k buffed). and yes i tried other weaps (sword and mace) but guardian still the best to man­tain agro.

    • Eagle /

      I think a lot of prot pallys is doing wrong by using the Blade­ward enchant it sucks for prot pallys because it only procs on 2 out of 100 hits but for war­riors it procs about 50–60 times per 100 hits, this is due to the fact that it procs on phys­i­cal dam­age while pallys using holy dam­age for most part.

      • Eagle /

        Sorry, this post reply was for the post below this

      • Funkenstien /

        Could you please show the source of these sta­tis­tics. I have never heard this before.

        Thanks

      • Dave /

        Seal of Vengeance ticks now count as weapon attacks and thus can proc blade ward­ing, mak­ing it a very viable enchant. Also, your stats are way wrong.

  13. deminoen /

    i have blade ward on my weapon as enchant go check it

  14. Sveltana /

    I run a level 60 Prot Pally on an account that doesn’t have BC or WOTLK on it (so I’m level capped at 60). I use this toon to run level 60 instances solo for fun. So far I have killed about half of the bosses in Stratholme. Self-buffed I have around 8k hp.

    I use life­ward. Since I have no need for threat pro­duc­tion and my mit­i­ga­tion is already sky-high for my level. I think the 1k-1.5k hp this heals in boss fight is prob­a­bly more valu­able than the mit­i­ga­tion potency would provide.

    I grant that the orig­i­nal post was refer­ring to level 80 raid­ing pal­lies, so I’m not argu­ing against potency, per se. But I thought some oth­ers might be interested.

  15. Eagle /

    As from patch 3.2.2 sta­mina isn’t increas­ing spellpower through tal­ent instead strength is doing that. So the potency enchant is look­ing better.

  16. Pitt /

    I per­son­ally use a sta­mina enchant. I think its like +40 or +45 stam. some­thing like that. I also got all sta­mina gems as my sock­ets, so maybe im just loco. lol. But thats me. My pally cur­rently has a lit­tle over 38k unbuffed. :)

    • Thorogar /

      What kind of enchant would that be ? Could you sup­ply a link to wow­head oder thot­tbot ? (Are you mix­ing this up with the bracer enchant ?)

  17. Peli /

    The proc rate on Blade Ward seems to have been reduced slightly; pos­si­ble hot fix?

    I have no real need for any other enchants though; cur­rently sit­ting at 45K++ Unbuffed; Full Raid buffed around 57K++; so regard­less of the drop in proc rate, it is still the most viable enchant for me.

  18. Citronelle /

    Hon­estly, mon­goose is still your best choice. The 120 agi not only yields almost another 2% dodge when it procs (which is very often and way more so than blade ward) but you also gain a lil armor (240), a good chunk of crit (threat) and increased attack speed (threat).

    While blade­ward can stack with 200 parry rat­ing per, but it dis­pels on the next parry and the enchant doesn’t proc a lot.

    Some peo­ple will still argue over this and I don’t know why or how they do. I’ve played around em all and mon­goose is where it’s @ IMO.

    Also, I’d like to add that I just stum­bled across this site for the first time. So, hi!

    • Peli /

      Since the nerf of the Paladin’s sta­mina scale; yes, Mon­goose is now arguably the best enchant. =]

      • Thorogar /

        Could you sup­ply math­e­mat­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the impact of the 3.3 stam nerfs on the enchant­mens situation ?

  19. Citronelle /

    What was the best enchant before the sta­mina nerf then? I can’t think of any­thing that was bet­ter than DA GOOSE?!?!

    • Thorogar /

      Be that as it may, I just asked for evi­dence con­cern­ing the influ­ence of stam changes on the sit­u­a­tion. (Mind: I did not say there are any. Peli did just that.)

  20. Citronelle /

    Sta­mina changes shouldn’t be even related to this topic. Mon­goose was the best before the — 4% scale down and still is after­wards. There isn’t a stam enchant to a 1h that makes it a “fac­tor” in this dis­cus­sion or out­weigh the ben­e­fits of Mon­goose. So, I guess I’m agree­ing with Thorogar and ques­tionong Peli? Idk.

    • Peli /

      It’s quite sim­ple; pre-Stam nerf we weren’t par­tic­u­larly con­cerned about the agility bonus and opted for the proc of the Blade­Ward; what with hav­ing around 63K raid buffed; now that our stam has been nerfed — Mine has per­son­ally been reduced to around 58K raid buffed; the agility does have a major affect our EH and is, in my opin­ion, only now “far” more appeal­ing than Blade­Ward. It always been beni­fi­cial but only for the lower geared or those that are overly con­cerened that their heal­ers aren’t up for the task.

      Ulti­matly it used to be per­sonal pref­er­ence and of course your own play­ing style matched against that of your raid groups play­ing style as a whole. Now? No choice but to go with Mon­goose; not entirely a bad thing but I do miss BladeWward on the odd occassion.

  21. Citronelle /

    Um, yeah, I’m still lost on your logic.

    I can’t see why you think the stam nerf has any­thing to do with mov­ing mon­goose into 1st place choice over tieing with blade­ward pre­vio­suly (based on “pref­er­ence” or play­ing style”) It’s ALWAYS offered more avoid­ance (for the excep­tion of blade­ward maybe proc’ing again to stack BEFORE you parry to dis­pel the effect. (which is less likely to hap­pen than the enchant proc­ing in the first place).

    And isn’t that what we’re con­cerned with as tanks? Achiev­ing the most EH? I mean why wouldn’t you have picked mon­goose before the nerf if it’s always been the bet­ter choice sta­tis­ti­cally? Even if your health is insane buffed, that’s no rea­son to quit. Keep going I say! Make your tank even more retarded in terms of EH.

    Say­ing mon­goose is bet­ter now vs blade­ward because of the stam nerf still doesn’t make sense to me, but maybe you can break it down for me?

    And as far as end game raid­ing goes, while “Chill of the Throne” is in play, Blade­ward starts to suck a lit­tle more con­sid­er­ing you’re gonna see more par­ry­ing over a dodge or miss on your avoid­ance table (pre­ceded by block of course for war­riors and espe­cially pal­adins). So that means the chance of the effect dis­pelling is now even higher, even if it stacked to maybe BRIEFLY be supe­rior to the avoid­ance of mongoose.

    Mon­goose how­ever con­tin­ues to, once again, proc way more, offer as much threat and doesn’t dis­pel until the effect times out. It’ll prob­a­bly proc again within the next 10 to 15 sec­onds, after it does.

    And while you might say, “Well, with –20% dodge, why even worry with 120 agi proc?”

    The answer is because we still treat dodge as though the –20% isn’t in effect. Chang­ing gear or gem­ming for parry isn’t very smart con­sid­er­ing you get dra­mat­i­cally less in terms of avoid­ance from parry rat­ing than you do dodge rat­ing or agi. Also, you’ll con­tinue to notice crazy amounts of dodge on the gear out of ICC. So, no real rea­son to get out of dodge. It is what it is. Now I know that dimin­sish­ing returns is still a tire­less enemy but with mon­goose and eva­sion up, my dodge chance is back @ 15% I hope they offer a 2.0 ver­sion or some­thing of the enchant in Cataclysm.

    Sorry, for the rant, or if I went off topic, I’m just incred­i­bly pas­sion­ate as I’ve debated this topic many times before. :(

  22. Lever /

    Sur­viv­abil­ity, sur­viv­abil­ity and sur­viv­abil­ity, so the Blood Drain­ing is the best. When you have low hp and you pray that the Mon­goose will proc it doesn’t. Blade Ward is the worst choice to pick, parry sucks at PvE so don’t even think about it anymore.

    • Vîper /

      If your dodg­ing more often you are sur­viv­ing. I have done test­ing on this exten­sively and mon­goose proc’s more period in com­par­i­son.. Test it your­self please!!!..
      Mit­i­ga­tion is the game for a tank and 1 agility = 0.04% of dodge (if you had 50 agility you would have an added 2% dodge). If your dodg­ing your not get­ting hit there fore you don’t need to worry about the heal as much. Also the proc for Enchant Weapon — Blood Drain­ing wont even begon to hap­pen until you reach 35% of health or lower with a max poten­tial of 5 times the heal of 360–440 x5 = 1800-2200hp at max ben­e­fit at a 10 sec inter­val when it does proc which is way less often than Mon­goose proc rate.

      At 30-50k raid hp 2k isn’t gonna make or break your raid, i have been raid­ing for years (Pally Bear and DK tanks) and as of LK 2k doesn’t add up to a hill of beans unless you or your healer are under geared for the encounter.

      With us tank­ing ICC i never drop below 35% but for a rare sec­ond or two never enough time to stack more than 1–2 of the procs when it does decide to proc.!!!

      This should be easy to see and the math is clear on it ( http://www.wowwiki.com/Agility_equivalence_points )

      As for the guy say­ing spell power for his wep for threat you are wrong.. Spell Dam­age = Sac­ri­ficed DPS * 4 per point.
      Your tak­ing away a 2–1 mod­i­fier to replace it with a –4 to 1 mod­i­fier for threat. ( http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Item_Values )

      a minor bit of research shows you why mon­goose is still a top notch tank­ing enchant and has been since BC.

      • Lever /

        a minor bit of research shows you why mon­goose is still a top notch tank­ing enchant and has been since BC. <- Did it and you are right. :) Blood Drain­ing is good for warrs, not for pallys. Sorry! :)

  23. lidriana /

    hmmm..no men­tion here about arms­men. Isn’t increased threat the goal?

  24. Variable /

    I’m new pally tank but not a new Tank or WOW player, I think a bear/DK tank talk­ing about what is best for a Prot Pally based on his expe­ri­ence is weak. Prot Pal­lies gain aggro from holy dam­age which ben­e­fits from spell power, in that, Con­se­cra­tion and any other spell dam­age that can take advan­tage of spell power will ben­e­fit. So the real answer is, can you hold aggro? If so, mit­i­ga­tion is bet­ter of course. If you need aggro and your a pally tank who gets the lions share, of said aggro, with Spells, well then… spell power may be bet­ter. With all things, with all these types of games, bal­ance is always good. No one knows what gear you have…

    Peo­ple who give absolutes about any­thing are gen­er­ally either very nar­rowly focused on their gam­ing expe­ri­ence (which is fine if you are sim­i­larly focused) or they are stupid.

  25. Gyorn /

    I was brows­ing the auc­tion house today look­ing for a suit­able tank­ing weapon enchant when I came across Scroll of Enchant Weapon — Blade Ward. I think this may pos­si­bly be one of the best weapon enchants for tanks.

  26. Dark /

    In the early days of the Lich King expan­sion, the spell power enchant actu­ally did up our threat. Since then there have been sev­eral changes and the gear has become so OP that the AP scal­ing from STR far out­weighs spell power any­more. As far as blade­ward, lifedrain­ing, mon­goose etc. it all boils down to pref­er­ence really. On fights with bosses, over­rall num­bers lean toward mon­goose being the over­rall best choice because of proc rate, mit­i­ga­tion, and threat gained. Blade­ward while an inter­est­ing idea turned out to not be as great over­all and less mit­i­ga­tion, if you use it good luck to you, but mon­goose is a bet­ter mit­i­ga­tion and threat gen­er­a­tion. Blood drain­ing because of Ardent Defender seems a lit­tle under­whelm­ing for Prot pal­lies atm…it could be a much bet­ter enchant with the changes in cat­a­clysm but now is a choice that is in my opin­ion bet­ter than blade­ward but less than mon­goose. That being said, with the mit­i­ga­tion gained from gear being so high, accu­racy (HIT and CRIT) is the BEST threat gen­er­at­ing enchant if you are under hit cap. I have used all these enchants and gear­ing and find that I value my hit cap more than any­thing else that these enchants can offer. If you want a 2k heal at a cer­tain point it is your choice of play­ing, you aren’t a bad player for it, but blade­ward plays 2nd fid­dle to mongoose.

    • Kiru /

      I’ve been play­ing with pure threat gem/enchants. I seem to be get­ting the most threat from 63 sp over 20 str or any­thing else. Any­one else play­ing around with sp???

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