Consider the greatness that is [Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling]. DK meet your new ticket to DK tanking badassery; a truckload of Stamina, plus two blue gem slots, expertise, and AP. I would say that this is probably the best DK tanking weapon you can get.

I had an opportunity to get this item earlier this week. My guild, The Core, beat Saurfang for the second week in a row and this bad boy was lucky to be in the loot table. Unfortunately, one of the problems with being a DK is that there’s just way too much plate to compete with right now. Our raid group has 2x Ret Paladins, 2x DK’s (including myself), as well as a hunter and a rogue, so getting any dps gear for me is going to be a fight.

I’m a Frost DW fan, so I’m currently using [Singed Vis’kag the Bloodletter] from Onyixia and [Nighttime] from Heroic FoS. So far, we’ve had two [Citadel Enforcer’s Claymore]’s drop, which went to Incitatus, our top Ret Pally, and Garinoff, the second DK; leaving Beldun, our second Ret Pally using EoR from Heroic ToC.

Ramaladni drops last night, and Beldun began to convulse and wet his pants in raid chat; Something along the lines of “OMG ITS AN EPIC WEAPONZORZ THAT I’VE ALWAYS WANTED I NEED THAT AXE I WANT I WANT I NEED I NEED.” Keep in mind that we’ve already explained that it’s pretty much a tanking weapon and the Claymore is a far superior dps weapon, and its dropped every week for us so far. Beldun proceeds to get epic fever, he saw it, it required two hands, and he saw that the item level said 251; greatest weapon ever for Ret Pallies, right?

Normally, I’m a forgiving guy. I gladly passed on the two claymores, but ths guy is definitely on my want list. I mention that I’m happy it dropped, and I receive the following response in officer chat: “Beldun really wants a weapon we need you to pass it to him, you use one-handers anyways.”

I’m happy to rake them over the coals on this one; particularly because I’m not a fan of Beldun as a player. He’s one of those people that plays whatever class is easiest and most OP at the time, and then hides behind it so everyone will think that he’s just an awesome player. He played hunters when they were sickly OP, then switched to DK (which he played quite badly, but we were admittedly OP at the release of LK). His decently geared DK was crushed on the damage meters by Incitatus when he was in mostly blues, so Beldun switched to Ret Paladin.

My main problem is that I have to use all my skills to beat him on the meters, when all he’s doing is sitting there and punching buttons to spam Divine Storm, Consecrate, and Crusader Strike. It takes little skill to generate high moderate dps on a Ret Paladin in ICC because it’s all undead and involves a lot of AoE pulls. It really burns me that a mediocre player can nearly equal, and in some cases, outshine a good player who’s playing a class that’s not over powered.

Do you all feel that damage is balanced among the dps classes? Do you feel like Retribution Paladins have an advantage or you, or is it about equal?

Best in Slot is a coined term that represents the best possible item for that slot for your particular class and spec at the present time. A lot of people seem to throw this term around. You’ve probably heard this in relation to Betrayer of Humanity. This weapon was the “Best in Slot” two-hander for most melee classes in Wow 3.0.

I wanted to go a little into detail on how we determine what a Best in Slot item is. The first concept to understand is Stat Weight. Each stat is boiled down to what benefit they give to you, a distilled number is assigned to that stat. Many times, attack power is used as a base of reference. A good example is the AP vs. Strength discussion. For us, 1 Strength gives you 2 Attack Power. However Strength does more for you than just provide attack power. So if AP were to equal 1, then your initial thought would be that Strength would equal 2. This is not exactly the case, because there are other conditions and talents that affect the value of Strength. So, for say Unholy, Strength is actually weighted as 2.97, not just 2.

Hit and Expertise are exceptions to the weight rule. Both stats only help you up to a certain amount. Once they reach this number, they’re pretty much worthless. This is commonly referred to as a “cap”. You will hear people throwing around terms like “hit capped” and “expertise capped”. In the case of hit, as a melee dps’er, you start with an 8% chance to not hit. Many people refer to having 8% or263 hit rating as being “hit capped”. Once you reach 263 hit rating, hit is pretty much worthless to you as a dps increase (also notice that as of WoTLK, the hit cap is 8% not 9%).

Expertise pretty much functions the same way. The expertise number you see on your character sheet is Expertise Skill. If you mouse over it, it will reveal your expertise rating. 8.2 expertise rating is equivalent to 1 expertise skill. To be expertise capped, you need 26 expertise skill (or 214 expertise rating).

Once you reach 263 Hit Rating and 214 Expertise Rating, these values are worthless to you for increasing dps. Say, your hit capped, and you get Stormedge, it won’t benefit you as much as someone who is hit capped. It does however allow you to drop hit on other items; for instance maybe you can swap out your Grim Toll for something like Fury of the Five Flights (I’m in pretty much full T7.5, I’m at like 10% hit, I really don’t need any more of it).

Now that we’ve talked about hit and expertise, we can present the stats. The awesome dudes over at Elitist Jerks have this stuff all figured out. Here they are (keep in mind, these are difference based on spec, and they’re listed in order of importance):

Unholy

Blood

Frost

Now, let’s apply these numbers to some actual items. We’re going to use Blood spec and compare Voldrethar, Black Blade of Oblivion and Earthshaper.

As you can see, Voldrethar scores 3161.34, while Earthshaper scores 2965.24. Keep in mind, that if you are hit capped, you lose the dps contributed by hit, so Earthshaper scores closer to 2799.58. Voldrethar is obviously the better weapon for us, in either spec. It is what we would call Best in Slot, and now you are empowered to understand why we call it that. For your enjoyment, here is the stat weight comparisons for all the two-handers in Ulduar: