Blade Warding enchant

Some discussion here: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=22435 about the new Ulduar enchants. I thought I'd start a new thread specifically about Blade Warding.

The recipe dropped for us the night of the patch on our FL kill. Last night I got our guild's main enchanter to put it on my Broken Promise and did some testing.

From whacking on skeletons in IC and from a few (not surprisingly failing) pug attempts at 25 man Emalon as an off tank, it seems like it procs on average once every 40-45 seconds. The effect IS consumed on your next parry. I'll have to look back at the logs and do a little more testing to see if it ever stacked, but I don't remember seeing it stack at all. There is a screenshot in the link above of it stacking, but I'm wondering if that's because it was on a target dummy, and it's not attacking you, thereby you can't parry any of it's attacks and use up the charge.

The proc gave me a little over 2.5% parry with my current gear. It replaced the agility enchant, which with kings gave me on the order of 0.3-0.35% dodge I believe. So... 1/3% avoidance permanently vs. 2.5% avoidance every 45 seconds until you parry, plus a little extra threat.

I'll be doing more logs and let everyone know how it turns out.

UPDATE: I was just thinking about weapon speed and the fact that the description says something like "each time you strike the enemy" there is a chance for the proc. I wonder if it's normalized to weapon speed, or if a faster weapon will have a higher proc uptime. Since Broken Promise is one of the slowest high-level tank weapons in the game right now, my 40-45 second proc time might be on the high end compared to someone with, say, Last Laugh. Does anyone have this on a faster weapon who can shed light on the proc rate?

The reason you won't see it much on mobs attacking you is indeed because you're very likely to parry an attack within 10 seconds. As you stated the proc is consumed once you parry while the buff is active. I don't see this stacking very often at all. All about the RNG. Gotta love it.

EDIT: The uptime of this so far has been great. I'll be keeping an eye out for it tonight in my Ulduar raid and will hopefully be able to post up some results then.

the important question here is... "Does it glow?"

Nyrin1 wrote:the important question here is... "Does it glow?"

Yes, a "fiery" red. Looks like nothing else in the game. I like it.

sold!

Screenshot for those that haven't seen it.

http://www.racerover.net/screenshots/bladeward2.jpg

Also an interesting thought, would reckoning possibly increase the up-time of the buff if the proc isnt ppm?

Racerover wrote:Also an interesting thought, would reckoning possibly increase the up-time of the buff if the proc isnt ppm?

Reckoning would increase the proc even if it were ppm. I'm still going to go with the assumption of ppm like every other enchant ever made.

For this to stand out as truly the best tanking enchant, I think the PPM'd have to be increased. Currently (according to...this topic) it's a really low over-all increase to your avoidance.

I posted this in the wrong thread:

Purely as a defensive enchant, I worked out the following for Blade Ward:

Assumptions:
20% base parry
2 second hitting mob
1.6 speed weapon
1 ppm

On my character, at around 20% parry, I get exactly 2.5% parry from Blade Ward, so let's go with that.

Blade ward procs 1 ppm + .27 ppm from hammers for 1.27 ppm.
Only 11.1% of parries I get with blade ward up will actually be parries I wouldn't have gotten anyway (2.5/22.5)
So, I get .141 (1.27*0.111) extra parries per minute or an extra parry every 7 minutes, 5.2 seconds
A mob hitting every 2 seconds will hit me 213 times in this period, so that's one extra parry every 213 swings or 0.46% extra parry.

But it gets worse. The above assumes I will actually parry every time Blade Ward is up.

From 5 swings at 22.5% parry (the number of swings in 10 seconds), I will parry at least once 72% of the time (1-0.775^5), so really:

0.46% parry*0.72 = 0.33% parry

As a defensive enchant, it seems worse than either agility or mongoose. I am not here counting the threat/dps component.

Did you factor in ~20% melee haste?

Also judgement procs it as it's a melee attack.

Just got this enchant and yeah its quite disappointing how little it procs

hmmm.. i was thinking of getting this enchant on titansguard if it drops.... so much hit on the new ulduar gear that accuracy might get overshadowed.

here is a wws report form naxx clare whit blade ward on

http://wowwebstats.com/t3b3gbfnxjaoo?ab=64442

so far i like it

That WWS look pretty disappointing. 4% uptime during all defeated boss encounters, that should be equal to about 8 parry rating on average.