Saturday, November 21, 2009

Shadowmourne and LOLARMORPEN

Shadowmourne
954 - 1592 Damage Speed 3.70
(344.1 damage per second)
+223 Strength
+198 Stamina
Red Socket x3
Socket Bonus: +8 Strength
Classes: Warrior, Paladin, Death Knight
Requires Level 80
Item Level 284
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 114 (2.48% @ L80).
Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 114 (9.26% @ L80).
Equip: Your weapon swings have a chance to drain a Soul Fragment granting you 40 strength. When you have acquired 10 Soul Fragments you will unleash Chaos Bane, dealing 1900 to 2100 shadow damage split between all enemies within 8 yards.

Stats finally got released. It looks pretty awesome. Proc is definitely amazing, free 200 strength sup? Works out to an average 621 strength on the weapon (if you gem 3x 20 strength) with BoK and Divine Strength, and that's not even considering the shadow damage portion of it.

But it's quite disappointing that they had to put armor penetration on it. No, this isn't a rant about how armor penetration is shit for ret paladins yet they keep shoving it down our throats on everything, there's enough complaining going around to cover that. Armor penetration is being removed entirely from the game in Patch 4.0 (probably a month or so before Cataclysm), and although that's a while off, the world first Shadowmourne probably will be too. With ICC being the last raid of the expansion, there won't be too long a time period between HM Arthas dying and 4.0 rolling around. I'm giving it 3-4 months at the most.

So where does that leave Shadowmourne? It will be used right up through Patch 4.0 into Cataclysm, and probably right into the first raid dungeon at 85. It'll obviously need a retooling with 4.0, but why wait for that? Change the stats now and get rid of the armor penetration in lieu of expertise and/or haste. It will not only solve the issue of having to rebalance it further down the track, but it will also make it more balanced stat-wise between the three classes that can use it.

Hopefully I'll get the chance to see one on my character before Cataclysm rolls out, but I have 2 excellent DKs and 1 mediocre one that, like me, dies to Laser Barrage on Mimiron to compete with.

~P~


1 comment:

  1. Do you honestly think Blizzard is going to go back and change every single item in the game with Armor Penetration? No.

    They will most likely just change all items to have an equivilant amount of the new Mastery stat which will result in around the same damage. Therefore evading the need to change anything individually.

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