Weapon Expertise vs. Reckoning

[Tybalt]

Reckoning has been a fairly decent talent for soloing, for proc'ing JoL/JoW, and for generating some extra threat. Weapon Expertise, however, is proving to be a better than expected talent that can provide both extra threat and extra mitigation. With a standard 0/49/12 build, would you rather spend 5 points in Reckoning or Weapon Expertise?

-Ty

[matchbox]

i went with weapon expertise

[Stumpytheozzie]

Situational. If you're tanking 1 on 1 against slow hitters, weapon expertise.

AoE against dual wielders, rekoning.

I'm sure a theorycrafter will tell you the enemy weapon speed required to break even.

[jere]

One day I will try out weapon expertise, but honestly, it is hard to give reckoning up as it provides quite a bit of extra utility besides just straight up damage.

I have been combat logging my prince fights each week and have found reckoning to be up 12-15% of the fight, during that time it is doing double damage. Since the prince is a fast dual wielding attacker with thrash, I would guess it would be up more like 5-6% of the fight for regular bosses, so it adds a nice amount of threat.

In addition to just straight damage and threat, it gets more SoL/SoW/JoL/JoW procs, helps build the SoV stack really quickly (for alliance) as well as maintain the stack.

One other feature I like about it is when I get bored and want to play with my 2H. Reckoning+2H+SoR = <3 (even more if you are playing with a shaman with windfury). Granted it is nothing like ret pallies with SoB/SoC and CS, but it is still fun to watch all the big weapon hits fly by when killing stuff.

In short, reckoning adds a lot of utility and fun in addition to the damage increase, while weapon expertise adds some mitigation in addition to the damage increase, so it is really up to what you want more. Currently I have gotten used to the utility and find it hard to give up, but I don't think one is clearly better than the other as they both provide different bonuses.

[Igrado]

while weapon expertise adds some mitigation in addition to the damage increase

I did not realize this talent added mitigation. I'm willing to admit I missed it somehow, but would still like it explained? Does a higher weapon skill give me a greater chance to Parry or something? Can anyone tell me the correlation?

[jere]

while weapon expertise adds some mitigation in addition to the damage increase

I did not realize this talent added mitigation. I'm willing to admit I missed it somehow, but would still like it explained? Does a higher weapon skill give me a greater chance to Parry or something? Can anyone tell me the correlation?

It decreases the chance that your attacker will parry your attacks and thus get a speed increase for their attacks on you.

[Tybalt]

while weapon expertise adds some mitigation in addition to the damage increase

I did not realize this talent added mitigation. I'm willing to admit I missed it somehow, but would still like it explained? Does a higher weapon skill give me a greater chance to Parry or something? Can anyone tell me the correlation?

It decreases the chance that your attacker will parry your attacks and thus get a speed increase for their attacks on you.

Bingo.

[Jarkeld]

It decreases the parry chance by what? The European blue posted awhile ago that it was 0.6% per skill level, but from some testing, see post from EJ forums:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t11885-rogu ... ussion/p3/
post #64, shows that at a testing of 365 weapon skill and another at 350, there was only a 0.2% difference in the parry chances. Now that doesn't mean that per weapon skill, parry is reduced by 0.013%, but that the number of parries that are reduced might actually be rather small.

[PsiVen]

In my mind, there is no choice. Reckoning is nice, and Weapon Expertise is bleh. I took 3/5 in it over Precision, only because I'd rather not put 3/5 in Devo.

[Egomantle]

I did some theory crafting comparing weapon damage from reckoning and weapon expertise, on the basis that they both (mostly) give white weapon damage. The main question was: would the extra hits coming from WE counter the extra attacks coming from Reckoning?

Factors I considered were:

• avoidance of the pally
• mob attack speed
• pally attack speed
• weapon speed
• weapon damage[8]spell damage

Attacks were white weapon and seal of righteousness only.

Under most circumstances, Reckoning came out as doing around 10% more damage. Mostly, this was from the extra Seal procs.

Under some circumstances, Reckoning came out as doing about 70% more damage. Anyone want to guess which circumstances? da da dah.... when the pally is being attacked really often (say once a second). Which is either a really fast boss, or multiple mobs. How's that for finding the obvious. :j

I did find one case where WE did come out as doing about 10% more damage... when the mob attack frequency got to around 10 seconds or so. Which is to say: when off tanking.

My conclusion... WE would be a great talent for a Ret or Holy priest to have.

My plans for a full comparison between Precision, Reckoning and Weapon Expertise have so far lost to my inclination to actually play the game.

[Lorath]

I agree with Jere here, quite frankly tank drops have been more or less nonexistant for me the last 2 months and I've been gearing up my Ret gear instead. I have 5/5 Reckoning and took one pts from Imp Judgement and invested in SoC. With gear alone reaching Ret starter raid level stats, I actually prefer going 2H most of the time unless tanking or AOE grinding. It's just so much more fun and way faster on 1-2 mobs. I can even hold my own as DPS in 5man instances (lol)

For me it's not even a choice. I need the versatility to keep me going with my paladin. Gorehowl + Reckoning melts the opponents hp so sweet ^_^

If you are a strict tank, the choice might no be so easy but I think WE might need too many points to be worth it. They should reduce the points to just the one so we can get a damn break from the horribly bloated tree.