Get the Last Word
Recently I’ve seen some folks poo-pooing Last Word, decrying as yet another one of “those sucky proc weapons.” I’d like to clear up this misconception, because nothing could be further from the truth. Here are three complaints I’d like to counterpoint:
1. It’s dependent on a proc
The proc was changed to have a 100% uptime. As long as you’re swinging that mace, you are benefitting from Blessing of Light.
2. The proc sucks
This sentiment could not be more wrong. Just focusing on the healing half of it, whenever Blessing of Light is up, any heals cast on you are increased as if the caster had 300 more spellpower. While this may seem like a small amount, it can be as much as 8% of the healer’s total buffed spellpower. That’s a lot of extra oomph to get just from a weapon proc.
This won’t translate into 8% more healing received, but it will make a noticeable difference in your healing intake and could feasibly make the difference in some sticky situations.
3. It doesn’t have any threat stats
With the proc having a constant uptime, you’re looking at 100 more strength. That’s comparable to just about every tanking weapon in ICC. Not only that, but the weapon speed is also huge. Slower weapons make your Holy Vengeance procs hit for more damage, among other abilities.
The slower the weapon is, often, the more threat your abilities will do. Indeed, according to Theck’s analysis, Last Word is the best tank weapon in the 264 range for tps. The 277 Last Word is the highest tps tank weapon in game.
In short, Last Word is a very powerful weapon. It’s a huge boon in the age of the trickle-down death, adding extra oomph to every heal you receive, and a powerful threat weapon to boot. Benefit while you can of the ignorance that surrounds this weapon and snatch it up before anyone knows any better.
Armory Feed
I do hope we start to see more and more weapons like this in Cataclysm. The theorycrafting coupled with a cool proc where an argument can be made on it’s usefulness is much more engaging that saying stat x or gem y is always your best choice.
I think all of these ICC weapons with procs are both the achievement of Wrath and one of the lesser talked about reasons to be so excited about Cataclysm.
@Rhidach
27 April 2010 at 2:13 pm #
I completely agree. It’s nice to have choices beyond a binary “more stats? (y/n)”.
Your claim of it being the highest of the 264 class and the 277 version being the highest TPS in the game needs a very large qualifier added onto it. Of the dubbed ‘tanking weapons’ its the highest TPS. However, there are a great many weapons that produce higher TPS out there.
@Rhidach
27 April 2010 at 2:09 pm #
That is why I said “tanking weapon” for 264, I just neglected to repeat myself for the 277. I’ve added the word “tank” to the 277 “claim”, though I’m not going to monkey with the font size to make it any larger a qualification.
@Pugtor
27 April 2010 at 3:37 pm #
“snatch it up before anyone knows any better.”
That’s exactly what I did, and that sucker is awesome. When the raid saw it on the corpse, our loot master said “What crap loot! Who wants that off-spec?”
Incidentally, I love seeing posts like this on your blog; it’s always so apropos!
This thing rocks as part of my threat set, and I swear I lasted an additional Shadow Breath on our OS3D burn last weekend.
For some healing classes, the proc is worth even more than 300 SP. Iirc, 300SP = 300 healing done only if the spell has a flat 1.0 modifier (which is slightly less than a 2 second base cast time). For instant cast spells, it’s actually a much higher boost.
Was in a GDKP run a few weeks ago on my DK (frost dw tank/unholy dps). We 2-shot putput (and it was our first time as a group seeing the fight). This dropped. I got into a bidding war with a warrior tank (I was there as dps but its a GDKP so no holds barred). I lost motivation after the bids were 5k and more. Big sigh :(
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