Missing Enchant - Lifeward

[Dragon]

The system is currently as of March 21, 2009, ignoring the Lifeward enchant on main hand weapon. Characters receive a 0 score for this enchant.

[Milagros]

Can u please give us your character name ,zone and realm name so we can check this. If your character is death knight its perfectly normal since all runeforge enchants are much better then normal enchants.

[Dragon]

An example would be:

Pumpkinknees on Arygos (Feral Druid)

If you look at his weapon you can see he is wielding Origin of Nightmares enchanted with Lifeward and his enchant score is 0.

This enchant is a 440 level enchant, the highest level for an enchant.

[Milagros]

Formula: Enchant Weapon - Lifeward :
after patch 3.0.8 this enchant heals for 330 average now (160earlier), and crit 450-600. The procc rate is random -around 5%.
We haven't found a single web site that considers this enchant worthy of its materials. So we wouldn't recommended it to anyone for PvE raiding.
On the other hand this enchant is good for soloing ,but that isn't priority for wow-heroes (since this is PvE raiding web site).
Usefull link for you :
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=44576#comments

[Dragon]

I think it is great you are scrutinizing the value of enchants but in this case I hope you will re-evaluate your assessment of the value of Lifeward.

I play a protection warrior so lets look at this from a tank's perspective. For raids like 10-man naxx that I do mitigation is the main priority. Threat is non-issue since Shield Slam generates huge threat now.

One of the current choices which WOW Heroes gives 15 points for is the Exceptional Agility enchant which grants 26 points of agility. At level 80 this equals 0.254% extra dodge.

That's good but is it really worth 15 points while Lifeward is worth 0? Let's do some numbers.

Let's say I take 1,000,000 physical damage during a 10-minute boss fight in 10-man naxx. During this time Exceptional Agility (+26 agility rating) will mitigate 0.254% of this damage or 2,540 points of damage. During this same time period Lifeward (3-5 ppm) will proc at least 30 times and heal me for 350 each time it procs for a total of 30x350 = 10,500 points of healing, more than four times what the agility avoids.

Obviously different boss fights have different requirements but it is a mistake to consider Lifeward as somehow useless compared to Exceptional Agility. In reality it will mitigate more damage overall than Exceptional Agility will in any raid.

I realize that Lifeward has been bad mouthed a lot in forums but it is a matter of simple math to show that +350 health at 3ppm is better mitigation than +26 agility in most fights. Note that in fights involving primarily magical damage, like Heigan, agility gives 0 mitigation.

I hope you will reconsider your valuation of Lifeward. Blizzard did not make this a 440 enchant for nothing.

[Dragon]

I think part of the problem with Lifeward evaluations it is a somewhat unusual enchant compared with a stat enchant so there is a tendency to deprecate it or spread "folk" rumors against it.

For example, a typical folk rumor is that Lifeward is useless for tanks because tanks are healed 100% practically all of the time. This statement is simply ridiculously untrue. In reality most mobs and all bosses have multiple, fast attacks that deliver constant damage to the tank. Many fights in fact have constant magical damage or auras that DOTs everyone in the raid including the tank. Sapphiron is a typical example. When you fight Sapph the damage literally scrolls off screen constantly. My own analysis of spreadsheet combat logs is that I am at full health less than 15% of the time and less than 5% of the time when heavy magical DOTs or auras are active.

Nevertheless people will hear unsubstantiated claims and rumors and repeat them.

[Milagros]

If you are so sure that Lifeward is worthy for PvE use ,please send me private mail with direct link for your character with WWS from any 25 man instances (not VoA please).
Numbers that you said are too low, since stack of lifebloom (which will also provide nice threat for you) can heal you more then Lifeward for entire fight duration.

[Dragon]

I am in a small guild so I don't often get to do 25-mans, but I did do 10-man Naxx on Monday. Here is results (see http://wowwebstats.com/fq46fau2oibtg):

Anub'Rekhan
Lifeward healed for 7630
physical damage: 470,689 x 0.254% = 1195

Grand Widow Faerlina
Lifeward healed for 3873
physical damage: 269,361 x 0.254% = 684

Maexxna
Lifeward healed for 7998
physical damage: 288,889 x 0.254% = 734

Noth
Lifeward healed for 6688
physical damage: 151,089 x 0.254% = 384

Heigan
Lifeward healed for 2718
physical damage: 8,154 x 0.254% = 21

Loatheb
Lifeward healed for 1713
physical damage: 124,084 x 0.254% = 315

Patchwerk
Lifeward healed for 8229
physical damage: 599,387 x 0.254% = 1522

Grobbulus
Lifeward healed for 9876
physical damage: 490,059 x 0.254% = 1245

Gluth
Lifeward healed for 7544
physical damage: 349,349 x 0.254% = 887

Thaddius
Lifeward healed for 7704
physical damage: 288,222 x 0.254% = 732

Instructor Rezuvious (no damage or healing due to mind control)

Gothik
Lifeward healed for 7121
physical damage: 100,523 x 0.254% = 255

The Four Horsemen
Lifeward healed for 7535
physical damage: 130,452 x 0.254% = 331

Sapphiron
Lifeward healed for 13,746
physical damage: 785,947 x 0.254% = 1996

Kel'Thuzad
Lifeward healed for 6647
physical damage: 227,414 x 0.254% = 578

all fights, all trash combined
Lifeward healed for 209,826
physical damage: 7,332,874 x 0.254% = 18,625

As you can see from the above its not even close. Lifeward heals roughly 10 times as much damage as the agility enchant would have mitigated.

Note that in Naxx 25 you take more damage but not huge amounts more. For example, in the run at http://wowwebstats.com/nmhwqwwjxpgp5?a=x12a4256 you can see the main warrior tank took 7,322,874 physical damage. So the results will be similar to 10-man naxx.

Also, note that the heals shown above are only real amounts healed, overheals are not included.

[Dragon]

I decided to do some more analysis. From the above you can see that Exceptional Agility sucks compared to Lifeward. What about Mongoose and Accuracy?

Let's look at the numbers:

For a typical full Naxxramas run Lifeward will heal for about 200K for a warrior with a 1.60 weapon (thats real heals, not overheals; the overheal rate if you are interested is typically around 30%-40%). Additional threat will be half the healing or 100K.

What about the competing enchants?

Exceptional Agility give +26 agility rating which for a level 80 character equals +0.254% extra dodge and +0.416% extra crit.

Exceptional Agility Mitigation: In a typical full naxx run a warrior MT will take about 6-10 million points of physical damage depending on different factors. 10,000,000 x 0.254% = 25,400 extra damage dodged. About 10 times less than Lifeward will heal.

Exception Agility Threat: a typical warrior does 4-8M points of damage in a full naxx run. Let's take 6M as an average: 6,000,000 x 0.416% = 24,960 extra threat, roughly one fourth the threat of Lifeward.

Conclusion: Exception Agility is pathetic, not even close to Lifeward in any key category

Ok, what about 6 abyss crystal favorite: Accuracy? It gives +25 crit rating and +25 hit rating. The crit rating is worth +0.54% extra crit, better than Agility. For our 6M example warrior it will do 32,400 threat. The +25 hit rating is worth 0.76% extra hits. This translates into 6,000,000 x 0.76 = 45,600 extra threat for a grand total of 45,600 + 32,400 = 78,000. Better but still not equal to Lifeward's 100K. Accuracy does 0 mitigation.

Conclusion: Accuracy is a lot better for a warrior tank than Exceptional Agility for threat, but is still inferior to Lifeward in both threat and mitigation.

What about that old standy, Mongoose?

Assuming a proc rate of 1 ppm and a 15 second duration you will have the lightning speed of the moongoose (+2% and +120 agility) on you about 22% of the time (accounting for proc overlaps). Multiplying that times the bonuses: 2% x 22% = 0.44% attack speed and 120*22% = 26.4 agility rating, about the same as the Exceptional Agility enchant. So you get the same mitigation as Exceptional Agility (ie, 1/10 of Lifewards) PLUS 6,000,000 x 0.44% = 26,400 extra damage and threat during our hypothetical Naxx run.

Conclusion: Mongoose is way better than Exceptional Agility, but still does not touch Lifeward in either mitigation or threat.

Also, note that in the above calculations a lot of very generous assumptions have been made. For example, most warrior tanks do less than 6M damage in a naxx run with attacks which benefit from the above enchants.

Overall conclusion: for a warrior tank Lifeward is by a long shot the best tanking enchant

[emaric]

I'm actually curious to see what the final verdict on the enchant is from what the admins have to say.

All the data is sound and the math adds up.

Any additional comments that want to be made because at the moment I don't think Blood Draining warrants the points it is getting if it caps out at 2200 HP healed at under 35% while Lifeward will have healed and surpassed that a few times over and if not your healers will have covered you.


Emaric
80 Prot Warrior 15/5/51
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