Blade of Eternal Justice (AQ20 weapon) got nerfed instead buffed

[Elisleris]

From Midpatch Itemization Changes Changelog
AQ20 Set Reworks:
All set weapons' item level has been increased from 70 to 74 and turned into Uniques, increasing their stats and DPS/Healing Power/Spellpower...

Actually Blade of Eternal Justice got nerfed in comparison of other classes weapon.
Weapon DPS increased but Spell power reduced.
Stats before update:

Stats after update:


That weapon definitely for protection paladin, because it is one-handed weapon, has 1% dodge. Retribution paly used two-handed weapons. Holy paly will look for weapon with a more large number of healing power.

Prot paladins for tanking used in own rotations abilities like Consecration, Seal of Righteousness, Holy strike, Holy shield (threat from holy damage increased by Righteous Fury). All these abilities scaled with Spell power, only HS scaled with both weapon damage and SP. If check any guide for protection paladin for WOW Classic, it propose to you use weapon with spell power for raid content (Thunderfury is exception).

Testing shown us in result reduction Spell Power despite the increasion DPS, TPS and damage got lowered. Caster weapon with high number of Spell Power show better result nevertheless the fact that they have less DPS.

Please refactore that changes.
Keep DPS as was before patch but increase spell power according to other AQ20 caster weapon.

[Elisleris]

Weapon changes summarisation during up item lvl from 70 to 74:
Melee DD: warrior and rogue got buff of weapon DPS from 51.5 to 55.2
Hunter got 1% crit
Caster: mage - got 40% more SP, warlock - got 20% more SP, elem shaman - got 20% more SP and 1% crit. Priest got 18% more Healing power.
Feral druid got 56 FAP, 50 armor, 1% dodge, still have the same 40 SP

It the same time paladin got 120% less SP and nothing in part of TPS because weapon damage gives too less for prot paladin

I think this is unfair and the changes should be revised.

[Jstansberry]

This really does seem like a strange change, every other AQ20 weapon got strictly buffed in terms of stat distribution. Physical damage is very unimportant for prot paladins, which is the spec this weapon is meant to cater to. Taking away stat budget from spell power to weapon damage is a really bad change and makes this weapon worse than MC tier alternatives in terms of threat generation. Prot paladins care about weapon speed (slower is better as Seal of Righteousness scaling increases the slower the weapon is) and spell power. Almost all their threat gen is from holy damage, so on auto attacks they want spellpower for Seal damage waaay more than physical damage.

[Kefke]

It's honestly a pretty aggressive nerf, too. It only gained 4 physical DPS. The substantial reduction in spell power, combined with less stats overall, doesn't feel even close to proportional. It's a Paladin-only weapon that, so far as I can see, is now only itemized for the Disenchant skill.

[Arthurusmenks]

The nerf changes are indeed useless to the function of the weapon as a pure tank weapon, and as said in the post the SP nerf makes it useless for a Prot Pally that can get Bloodcller and/or Azuresong Mageblade much easier, much earlier and are outright overall better weapons, of course by the time you get to exalted with CC you might actually have killed already Viscidus so potentially you could've got even the upgrade for BoEJ.

[Ghola]

This sword was nerfed because much like shaman 0.5 gear, it was changed a long while back to be massively overbudgeted with stats. If you compare the blade now to the original version in 1.12, it is still massively buffed

https://www.wowhead.com/classic/item=21 ... al-justice

[Elisleris]

This sword was nerfed because much like shaman 0.5 gear, it was changed a long while back to be massively overbudgeted with stats. If you compare the blade now to the original version in 1.12, it is still massively buffed

https://www.wowhead.com/classic/item=21 ... al-justice

Okay. In case it was overbudgeted, let's change it in same way as for other casters - slow weapon with low DPS and high Spell power.

[Kefke]

This sword was nerfed because much like shaman 0.5 gear, it was changed a long while back to be massively overbudgeted with stats. If you compare the blade now to the original version in 1.12, it is still massively buffed

https://www.wowhead.com/classic/item=21 ... al-justice

I'm not sure if you can really call it overbudgeted, though. Given that, as others have said, there are other items that are both statistically better and easier to obtain for the role it is made for, I think that it would be fair to say that it was budgeted where it needed to be.

[Arthurusmenks]

This sword was nerfed because much like shaman 0.5 gear, it was changed a long while back to be massively overbudgeted with stats. If you compare the blade now to the original version in 1.12, it is still massively buffed

https://www.wowhead.com/classic/item=21 ... al-justice

The fact that the budget is being caltulated with PHYSICAL dps for a non-physical user like prot pally I would argue that the budget is being missused and as such deserves to be changed, the actual state of that weapon is just bad.

[Verdict]

Even if you look at these items from a different perspective it makes no sense.

If you look at the entire set in 3/3 fashion, it's buffed. However 3/3 is not a motivation for Tanks which is the only reason to pick this thing up.

It's a stupid change however mainly because of the uncalled SP nerf.

[Elisleris]

As proof in #paladin discord chanel exist pinned spreadsheet Rof's Prot Paladin wep TPS calc
If we compare stats of current 74 lvl weapon and stats of old 70 lvl weapon, we can see that TPS get down from 749.9 to 740.4 although it is claimed that the weapon was buffed.

[Verdict]

They fixed it, now it gives 40 spell power and is a really good weapon! :)

[Elisleris]

It will be superior weapon for its lvl in case they will increase spell power e. g. to 56 as for Mage or to 64 as for Shaman and do not touch DPS. Dreams....

[Axiya]

Can spell power enhance Thunderfury's damage?