Fleshgrinder  

 

I just bought my second Fleshgrinder this weekend on Fennin Ro. I worked my way through level 58 this week in Plane of Disease so i had plenty of time to experiment with different combos. Like the earlier post, i had a Disembowler and a fleshgrinder at one point. While i did notice a drop in damage output (went from hitting for 70's to 60's) (always with max str) i noticed a huge increase in aggro. While a proc such as Frostbite on a frostbringer grabs the mobs attention faster then a grinder, it doesnt maintain it like the fleshgrinder does. Ive used both a fleshgrinder and frostbringer in primary and i can say that with 255 dex each time, the grinder procs a bit more than the frostbringer. Additionally, while it is true that the offhand weapon procs less often, i went from proccing on avg. 8 time a fight to a whopping 14 to 16 with 2 grinders (with 255 dex in both cases). Thats an additional 2240 to 2560 damage on top of my regular melee output which is quite high given the ratio of the fleshgrinders. Another thing to consider is resists. While the proc (fire based) is resisted every once in a while, when you are hunting in PoP against mobs that are avg level 55 (tier one mobs), your group will most likely have a slower (sham/enc) and they will be debuffing or tashing the mob anyway so 95% of the procs will hit. Prior to PoP, mobs in karnors castle or kael drakkal or whever you may be hunting simply do not have high resists due to the fact that they are are either cold based or level 50ish mobs.
Another thing that should be addressed in this post is all the warrior vs ranger crap. personally, i believe that pre PoP rangers were a fine main tank. now however, with the release of PoP, it has become very difficult for any class BUT a warrior to main tank in a group setting. This isnt because rangers are an inferior class, but rather due to the way VI has engineered the character classes. If a ranger had the hp/ac of a warrior, he wouldnt be a ranger, he'd be a warrior. Rangers werent programmed to have the kind of hps that warriors do and therefore cant handle the sort of damage that the PoP mobs dish out. On the other hand, i'd like to see a warrior shoot a mob with a bow for 1k+ damage. The classes are different and therefore have their own strengths and weaknesses (warriors included: lets see a warrior solo PoV/PoS/PoN etc)
Lastly, when it comes down to who should use the grinder, it reall doesnt matter. yes it generates aggro, but any good warrior will be able to maintain taunt over the mob no matter what his group does to it. 160 dmg from a proc is nothing compared to a sunstrike crit froma wizard. Just TAUNT.

Suurge Drackenfyre
59 warrior of Fennin Ro