TF enchant?

[Reeco]

Yeah, yeah, it's a tank weapon, I know. But I got the first binding months ago, before the nerf and before we had a MT who we knew was loyal to the guild. And I've read that it can still outdamage pretty much everything else since 1.10.

Anyhoo, I'm going to be getting it in about 5 days, and need to decide which enchant to put on it. I was planning on Lifestealing, until a fury warrior told me it hardly ever procs. This surprised me, as I thought LS procced a lot. I am looking for as many procs as possible that TF can proc off.

Is LS only effective with both weapons enchanted with it?

[DotComm]

LS procs a lot. 6ppm, except it's more like 9ppm if you factor in the instant strikes too. It goes off a good 3 or 4 times per fight, and that's when I'm grinding twilights in Silithus.

I really like it, except it can be resisted, and if it procs when you're at full health it's half wasted.

[funkeh]

LS does proc alot. About 3-4 times per fight is normal. It is quite nice for MC and usually accounts for about 5% of my damage in total. It tends to do more damage than Darkmoon Card: Maelstrom overall.

[Schnorres]

There is a blue post, TF is the best Tank weapon AND still the best Combat Rogue weapon.
The Nature damage is affected bei Attack Power (!) afaik.
1/3 of your damage should be nature damage, proc rate ~15%.

LS is nice (and weapon speed independant), but I would still go for agility/ap

[Krollin]

I have read that too, they nerfed TF simply because it was doing outlandish amounts of damage in the hands of a Combat Rogue.

There was a video of a Combat Rogue wielding TF with LF and wearing full Bloodfang. He was basically unkillable because of all the healing he got from the procs while he was mashing everything in sight.

As a result of this both TF and BF got toned down.

Even if you are at full life LF still does its damage component.

Do not put a stats enchant on a MH weapon, ever.

[swelt]

Lifesteal procs alot. But part of the reason it procs alot for average sword rogues is that they have slow main hand swords. The enchant has a PPM rating (6?) which is translated into a chance on hit factoring in the speed of the weapon. This is done so that daggers, 1h and 2h weaps all get the same benefit from the enchant when doing autoattack. However, the chance on hit is also applied to our instant strikes - so when you spam SS you typically generate a bunch of extra procs. Great. Thing is, with TF being a fast sword, that chance on hit is going to be fairly low so your additional LS procs from SS will also be a little lower than that of an average sword rogue.

If it were me, I'd be considering going for lifestealing + maelstrom + improved instant poison. With sword proc, poison proc and lifesteal procs all giving a chance to proc maelstrom, it could get pretty proctastic. Given the relatively low sinister strike damage from TF, I'd probably drop lethality for 5/5 Imp Instant.

[Krollin]

Swelt, if what you say is true then LF should proc at the same rate regardless of the weapon speed so LF will be as effective on TF as say CTS. The only thing that drop is the proc rate off SS spam. On the other hand the rate of extra attacks you get increases making up for this (extra attack procs are a fixed %chance per attack)

Combat Sword Rogues get the benefit of extra attacks as well as accelerated weapon speeds, another reason why you always want to use proc enchants on your MH.

Giving up Lethality for Imp Instant Poison is going to cripple you if you have poison resistant/immune and/or nature resistant/immune mobs.

Agreed, the SS damage for TF is reduced but you make up for that from the TF proc itself (which you will not be using if things are NR Immune anyway).

I would also not be using Maelstrom with TF attractive as it sounds, I would be getting as much AP as possible to boost the TF proc damage as well as all my other damage. A much better trinket would be HoJ, +22 AP and +2% extra attack chance.

[Amiral]

Swelt, if what you say is true then LF should proc at the same rate regardless of the weapon speed so LF will be as effective on TF as say CTS. The only thing that drop is the proc rate off SS spam. On the other hand the rate of extra attacks you get increases making up for this (extra attack procs are a fixed %chance per attack)


what he mean is:

example (crusader to simplify things)

Crusader: 1PPM
with a 3.0 speed weapon, you do 20 attacks per minute.

1/20=0,05=5%

which means that all attacks with the 3.0 speed weapon will have a 5% chance to proc crusader, with auto-attack, evening out at 1 PPM.
but, your instants also has this chance.
lets assume you also do 10 SS per minute.
this means 30 attacks per minute, 50% more than only auto-attack, means that your Crusader will also proc about 50% more, which means 1.5 PPM.

[swelt]

Re-read what I said. The number of procs from white damage will be the same. The number of additional procs from SS spam will be less. Additional Sword spec procs may make up for that. At the end of the day, it's going to proc "quite alot", lifesteal always does. Experience of using LS on daggers made me realise that it's far from uniform.

Lethality is overrated for sword builds generally, but especially for a weapon like TF or the Hakkari sword. Think about it - 5 talent points to buff sinister strike crits. How much of a combat sword rogues overall DPS is generated by sinister strike _crits_? In a build concept that revolves around hitting alot (snd, sword spec procs, fast mainhand weapon) having 30% chance (35% with bloodfang) to apply instant poison is massive, especially when you are reducing your targets nature resistance.

I don't disagree that HoJ would be a great trinket, I don't see that as mutually exclusive with Maelstrom, unless you have something like DFT.

edit: http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?wheco0xZG0EzMVzxzo

I'll freely admit this is theorycraft, I don't have TF. But conforming to normal talent builds when you are using a weapon outside the normal rogue weapon mold doesn't seem too wise to me.

[Reeco]

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

I had Crusader on Teebu's (2.90) and it procced a lot - much more than I expected it too, so that's consistent with the ppm theory - as is my warrior friend saying he doesn't get many LS procs. He uses a fast tanking weapon.

Still a bit odd that you get more procs with slow weapons, it would seem to make more sense that more hits = more procs.

I have Malestrom, but at the moment I'm not using it, favouring Blackhands Breath. It procs quite rarely for me, so I imagine extra TF procs because of it would be barely noticeable. I don't have IIP, but I do have the 3/8 BF bonus which will help.

Someone else has suggested Fiery, saying this procs more than LS. Anyone got any experience of this?

[Reeco]

Re-read what I said. The number of procs from white damage will be the same. The number of additional procs from SS spam will be less. Additional Sword spec procs may make up for that. At the end of the day, it's going to proc "quite alot", lifesteal always does. Experience of using LS on daggers made me realise that it's far from uniform.

Lethality is overrated for sword builds. Think about it - 5 talent points to buff sinister strike crits. How much of a combat sword rogues overall DPS is generated by sinister strike _crits_? In a build concept that revolves around hitting alot (snd, sword spec procs, fast mainhand weapon) having 30% chance (35% with bloodfang) to apply instant poison is massive, especially when you are reducing your targets nature resistance.

I don't disagree that HoJ would be a great trinket, I don't see that as mutually exclusive with Maelstrom, unless you have something like DFT.

I have DFT, so I've only got one spare trinket slot.

:D

[swelt]

Well since you've got DFT+HoJ+Maelstrom, my suggestion would be "experiment" :)

I added in this to my previous post: http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?wheco0xZG0EzMVzxzo - typical 20/31 except dropped lethality and 2 points from aggression. It makes no sense to me to invest points in talents that buff sinister strike when SS is going to make up such a small part of your overall damage profile.

[Reeco]

Not got HoJ, but I am planning on experimenting with Maelstom + TF. I reckon it will take a fair few raids to get an accurate picture.

[DotComm]

Someone else has suggested Fiery, saying this procs more than LS. Anyone got any experience of this?

I believe fiery has a 6ppm value like LS. Of course, LS would be more useful in MC. Also, fiery has a slight increase in DPS (40 dmg compared to 30 dmg) but you don't get any healing so it's not so good in this respect.

[Aerath]

Here's an interesting link about Lifestealing:
http://rogerkarlsson.com/blogs/wow/lifestealing/

[Sarnat]

I put +15 agi on mine, not sure if that's the best possible though.

[Krollin]

@Swelt: I didn't need to reread it, I got it right the first time and I agree with you about the reduced SS proc chance...

SS crits account for 15% of my damage, without Lethality I am giving up 5% of my damage -all- the time. If I drop that and go for Imp IP I am gimped where mobs are poison resistant or immune. If I come up against physical immune mobs I am stuffed anyway and nothing procs, not even poison/Maelstrom.
Also Lethality scales up where as Poison damage does not. The attractiveness of the NR reduction is lessened if mobs do not have NR to begin with, resistances can only be reduced to 0 and no lower.

For me crit% is a very valid way of increasing my damage in a way that scales. Damage sources which don't scale become less and less important the better your equipment gets. As a combat Rogue the best way to get crit is to increase Agi, one of the reasons why I can get 550+ agi if buffed to the max now and have a crit% of 35+% (in fact I am pretty sure I can get 600+ agi now).
Outside of DFT the best commonly available trinkets for a Combat Rogue are HoJ, Counterweight Lodestone and BB. Maelstrom, while nice, gets left behind.
In Reeco's place I would use DFT and BB and try to get HoJ

[Reeco]

It's looking like HoJ would be my best bet. The extra attack and attack power seem to be just the ticket.

[Krollin]

It's looking like HoJ would be my best bet. The extra attack and attack power seem to be just the ticket.
That 2% chance seems small but Sword Spec you are getting 8% (in total) chance per attack of another MH attack which can cause procs. Thats massive.

[swelt]

Well I guess we'll have to disagree then. If I had a sword that SS for less damage than a thrash blade, I wouldn't invest 8 talent points to make it suck a bit less. SS crits may make up 15% of your damage, but I doubt that's true for a TF rogue who will get most of their damage in white and proc.

[Krollin]

I guess the reason why I would not lose Lethality is simply because TF is not always the best weapon to use.
Having said that I doubt I will ever get TF anyway so the question is moot for me.
My arguments for choosing Talents which scale my damage up instead of adding a fixed amount are however valid regardless of the weapon.

[Sarnat]

I have TF and I didn't switch to combat.

There is 6% chance for extra attacks, but the chance to proc Thunderfury from an extra attacks is not very high. The deal with TF IS the proc. No procs, no damage equal to epic weapons. You would probably do better PvE damage with a combat spec, but it's not gonna be anything totally amazing.

[Reeco]

Well I got it last night, and it's insane. Proof of the pudding will be in a raid, but my initial use of it was duelling and WSG. It procs a lot, enough for the 300 damage to feel normal, and not a bonus. In one duel with a warlock it procced 5 times. Of course, I could hit a bad streak at any time, but if last night was typical then I'm already in love. It just rips through stuff.

SS damage is still very good, the nature portion obviously helps more than it would appear. In fact, with the large amount of white damage (1.90 speed, 53dps) and the procs, the slight SS reduction pales into insignificance. I was doing enough "big" SS crits that compared very well with my Vis'kag to consider it a non-issue. My guildies were watching me on 1 v 1's against epic warriors and couldn't believe how fast their health dropped.

I've not enchanted it yet. Will get LS tonight.

[Krollin]

@Reeco: I was in BRD helping a Guildy take his alt through Jailbreak and I got Windsor's Frenzy, a buff that speeds attacks by 65% (I am not kidding). Using SnD/BF and AR in the next fight caused me to proc like a crazy thing. With Vis'Kag I was getting an attack speed of 1.2 seconds!!! See if you can get that buff and then slap things around with TF. Make a video while doing it!! Problem with the buff is that you lose it forever if you get beyond 10 yds of Windsor....

[Reeco]

Sounds like a lot of fun.

:laugh:

Spreaking of extra attacks, does anyone know if the extra hits (the "AoE" ones) from Blade Flurry can proc stuff?

[Krollin]

I am not certain they actually count as extra attacks, IIRC Blade Flurry damages the nearest extra opponent rather than simply attacking it.
I always see dmg from the extra mob being done when an attack on the main target succeeds but nothing, not even a miss shown, when an attack on the main target missed.

I may be wrong but dodged attacks may still cause damage on the second as can parried, blocked and glancing blows.

Edit: I have never seen a mob damaged by the secondary damage from BF get poisoned either.

[Reeco]

Ok, got Lifestealing last night. Although I can't give any exact figures, it procs a lot and TF seemed to proc more. How about that for scientific? The "test" involved a 3 man group doing the first bit of LBRS. TF procced 20 times on the first 2 groups of mobs. Then some more people joined and we 8 manned rend. TF procced 6 times on him, not including the first dragon killing bit.

So, thanks for the input - I'm very happy with the enchant.

:laugh: