Blazeguard vs The Sun Eater vs King’s Defender Part Two
So What Does All That Mean?
The first thing to note about these three swords is that they are all excellent tanking weapons and any T4 Warrior Tank would be well served by any of them. If you have only one of the trio, there’s no need to think that you absolutely must get the other two. That said, since most T4 tanks will have the chance to get at least two of the swords (and three if they’re Swordsmiths) let’s look at the strengths of each sword and what situations they will shine in.
The Blazeguard is, as we’ve seen, an excellent threat generating weapon. It would be a great choice to use in fights where you might be rage-starved (to ensure that more of your threat-causing attacks hit) or in fights where you need to establish aggro quickly. Attumen the Huntsman in Kara comes to mind. He’s untauntable and hits pretty hard - if you lose aggro, chances are good that your healer is going down.
The Blazeguard would also be a great Heroic tanking sword. 5-man bosses generally don’t hit hard enough to necessitate tons of Avoidance, so being able to put out a bit more threat will allow your group to proceed more quickly through the dungeon.
The Sun Eater is geared more towards Avoidance and Mitigation. It is an excellent weapon to use in fights where threat is not really a concern, and simply staying alive is more of an issue. The Curator fight in Kara is a great example of this: you’re going to have plenty of time to establish a huge amount of threat on Curator while everyone else in the raid is beating on the flares. So having The Sun Eater to increase your survivability will definitely help things go more smoothly.
The Sun Eater would also be a good weapon to use for any content that you’re not familiar with, or that you might be a bit under-geared for. In situations like these, you will help the raid more by increasing your survivability rather than increasing your threat output.
The King’s Defender is essentially a poor man’s Blazeguard. The two swords are very similar, and geared towards the same things, but the Blazeguard is a little bit better in each area. If you’re not a Swordsmith, or don’t have the Blazeguard yet, use the King’s Defender in the situations we discussed above for the Blazeguard.
Enchants
So now that we know the strengths of each sword, let’s take a look at how to enchant them to amplify those strengths. There are three weapon enchants that are geared towards (or at least very helpful for) tanks: Mongoose, Battlemaster and Executioner.
Mongoose is a fantastic Avoidance/Mitigation enchant. When it procs, it gives an additional 4% chance to Dodge and and extra 240 Armor. Battlemaster and Executioner both give additional threat when they proc, with Executioner being the superior one of the two.
If you only have one sword, and don’t foresee getting any of the others, slap Mongoose on that puppy and go to town. It’s the best all-around enchant, and making sure your gear helps you stay alive is a Tank’s first priority.
On the other hand, if you’re like me, and there’s a good chance you’ll have all three swords at some point, then you have an interesting dilemma. I believe that I would do this: put Mongoose on The Sun Eater to enhance its Avoidance/Mitigation. Put Executioner on Blazeguard to make it even more of a super-duper threat generating weapon. Then put Battlemaster on King’s Defender. (All of this is dependent, of course, on your being able to afford the mats. Also, if you’re planning on upgrading Blazeguard to Blazefury soon, it’d probably be best not to put any enchant on it just yet.)
Here’s my reasoning on the enchants: if you have all three swords, King’s Defender isn’t going to see much action. The Sun Eater and Blazeguard will handle 90 - 95% of all the fights that you see. Putting Battlemaster on King’s Defender will allow it to be helpful in healing intensive fights - fights like Shade of Aran in Kara, and the gauntlet event leading up to Akil’zon in ZA come to mind. Having an effective party-wide AoE heal for those fights would be a significant help to your healers, and would allow King’s Defender to see some sunlight every now and then.
Final Thoughts
So there you have a rundown of the three best T4 tanking weapons. I hope this has helped you figure out which sword is best for you. Any of them will last you well into T5, if that’s where you’re heading, or until WotLK comes out, if you don’t plan on going into the 25 mans. Enjoy!
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