Blood Draining won’t kill you, but it still sucks
As anyone who frequents Maintankadin would know, Theck is an inimitable mathematical genius who usually plies his trade at crunching numbers to better our understanding of our class. In this post he applies his numerical accumen to Enchant Weapon – Blood Draining, which some Paladins questioned would (due to its mechanics) have the nasty tendency of killing us.
Basically, because BD procs at the same point that Ardent Defender would kick into effect, it could feasibly push you over the AD threshold, back into that scary territory where extra 30% damage reduction does not roam… and allow a boss to leapfrog AD and finish you off. Not good.
Well Theck ran a detailed analysis of Blood Draining and posted his results in this thread. In essence, BD on average is not more likely to get you killed, but it’s also not on average going to save you.
QED:
Despite the fact that blood draining won’t reduce your survivability, it also doesn’t do anything to increase it for very large boss hits. Unfortunately, very large boss hits are often what kills a tank, making this an expensive enchant that works best in the cases we don’t need it, and worst in the cases we do.
I haven’t had a chance to try out Blade Warding yet, but at least I know to avoid this enchant now.
Update: As Honorshammer points out in the comments below and on his blog, Theck amended his data to simulate raid healing and BD comes out much better. I think I’m still not a fan, but it’s definitely not as bad seeming as it first was.
Armory Feed
<—– Sticking with +26 agi for my Titanguard. Period.
And yeah, im a Cheap Bastard. I mean, whats the point if the “T8″ chants are pretty much “in line” with everything that came before them since Kara? I mean, Mongoose is still one of the best, if not “the Best” tanking enchant, and the rest of these newer chants are:
1- More expensive to do
2- somewhat equally effective
3- Easier to get (go go recipe vendor)(does not apply to BW since its a drop from a raid zone, but meh…)
so, whats the point of adding more chants=?
@Rhidach
14 May 2009 at 5:05 pm #
From what I’ve read, BW is actually a little more avoidance than Mongoose, and a little more threat. Considering you’ve got pretty much BiS (so much jealous, btw) it wouldn’t be a bad idea to enchant that. I’ll do an actual post on this with numbers later.
humm, the thing is that while the 200 Hit rating can stack, the PPM is quite low, and each charge will be consumed with the next parry IF said parry ever gets to happen due to your actual Parry Rating and Diminishing returns, and about threat, well, its never been a real concern to me at least, and 1k extra dmg every now and then is not gonna make or break anything ( the only time i got passed on Threat was by a VERY VERY VERY stupid hunter that didnt do Feign Death when i was still on blues, so he got aggroed, smashed, and then the boss came back at me. PD: i think i saw the boss smile after killing the huntard)
@Rhidach
14 May 2009 at 10:43 pm #
Right but from what I read even with the whole charge being consumed deal, on average it works out to more avoidance. I swear I’ll write a post about it soon with numbers, haha.
And I love when hunters pull aggro. They are the one class that should never ever EVAR pull aggro.
yeah, even Crappy locks can soul shatter, but WTF am I talking about, locks have been an endangered species since 3.0, i haven’t seen one since, but there is a friend of a friend of my cousin’s brother in law that claims seeing one on a cave on icecrown weeping the whole time, scaring even the scourge.
@honorshammer
15 May 2009 at 8:39 am #
“Unfortunately, very large boss hits are often what kills a tank, making this an expensive enchant that works best in the cases we don’t need it, and worst in the cases we do.”
If you look further into the thread where this was said, you’ll find that Theck reversed his stance once he simulated real world healing.
He says “Adding healing to the equation extends the range in which Blood Draining is useful.
A good rule of thumb is (AD_Threshold + Incoming_Heals – Boss_Hit_size) > 0. The bigger the value, the better the enchant is.
Blood Draining never reduces your Time To Live. The extra AD Leapfrogs it causes will always be at least offset by the extra AD saves it causes.
It means BD is better than most people assumed. It’s very easy to imagine one bad scenario and draw a conclusion from it that’s incorrect because you failed to notice a compensating good scenario.”
@Rhidach
15 May 2009 at 9:40 am #
Yeah I saw your post this morning when I got to work and I meant to amend this post with those new details. You beat me too it though.
@Pugtor
15 May 2009 at 11:10 am #
For what it’s worth, Blade Warding’s worth 53 dps for me; I haven’t noticed any significant survivability increase with it, but occasionally killing trash with a 3k BW crit is mighty fun. It reminds me of the reposte mechanics from EverQuest…
@PinkRaidFrames
15 May 2009 at 12:34 pm #
I’m really torn right now over weapon enchants. I’m really sick of the BC enchants. I’m leaning towards BW or BD on my Stoneguard (dammit! Why won’t Titanguard drop!) as I’ve got the mats for both. However, I lost some hit when I replaced Broken Promise so maybe that’s where I need to go for now. I’m tempted to just do BW so I can run some tests on it and blog on the topic.
@Rhidach
15 May 2009 at 12:40 pm #
Yeah I’m really tempted to try BW as well. I’m going to wait til the mythical Titanguard drops to give it a whirl though. Mats are too expensive to drop on just a test and potentially wipe Accuracy off my LL for no reason.
@PinkRaidFrames
15 May 2009 at 12:59 pm #
Good call. I should probably just get the +hit for now and continue dreaming about Titanguard and then drop the mats bomb on that.
@Rhidach: Now that i have seen the update, im actually wondering when will I be able to put Blood Draining on my titanguard.