First Merciless ItemFollow

Hi guys,

so i've done about 4 weeks of 2v2 and 3v3 arena, and by next week i'll have about 1200 arena points, so i want to start spending them.

right now i'm using using vindicators brand in my MH, and Latros shifting sword in my OH. i'm thinking of getting the merciless offhand sword, but i hear all the time that maces is the way to go. However i want to do PVE as well, and dont want to gimp my dps by going maces. So, will i be losing a lot of DPS if i decide to raid as combat maces? or will it be so negligible that it wouldn't matter.

If i did go Combat maces, i'll probably use fools bane in my MH, which is yet to drop from kara, but hopefully it will this week :)

my armory profile for reference.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmourne&n=Fsh

Maces will do just fine for PvE. Will you put out as much damage as you would if you had swords? No. Does that mean it's not viable? No. Sword spec (or fist spec) does add a small but noticeable amount of DPS. However, you will remain very competitive with maces.

One thing you should realize is that the MH arena weapon, be it sword or mace, will give you a much higher DPS increase than the OH will at this point. While your current sword is nice, it's not even in the same ballpark as the merc slicer. Latro's, while blue, has great stats for swords and an excellent speed for combat builds utilizing combat potency. The upgrade from latro's to the merc quickblade actually isn't all that great. Speed has a huge effect on DPS for an offhand. The quickblade is a better offhand (the large jump in raw DPS is enough to overcome the speed); however, it's not a huge gain. I would, in all honesty, hold off and get the MH weapon first (be it sword or mace).

Honestly there arent many good options for mace untill you get MH foolsbane and off hand arena mace. You have dragonmaw which is lower than mh arena, or dragonstrike which is good if you are doing BT and can get ahold of the hearts.


Runic hammer http://wowhead.com/?item=23544 is like the best you can get without foolsbane and BS. then your offhand is Blackout Truncheon http://wowhead.com/?item=27901...Honestly for lack of options i'de pick up the sword off hand and wait till you get foolsbane and enough arena to buy the off hand mace before i'de start pvp as mace build.


To the off point, YES. There is very little to offer other than aldor sword. You have MH and BT stuff, spite blade, which never drops, Kazzak sword, arena sword,thats better, but for easily obtainable the only thing close is http://wowhead.com/?item=28956 which you can buy with honor, but LOL at its stats.

Scyer has like a great belt and thats it. Aldor has a great ring. If your a sword spec i don't know why you would be scyer. I haven't looked at any patterns or anything though.

Wowwiki says 60/40 for combat rogue but i don't understand why its that low ( i guess combat daggers)



http://www.wowwiki.com/Comparison_of_Aldor_and_Scryer_rewards

I'd go with the offhand personally, though I'm a bit biased as I'm a sword rogue. But as to how much damage you lose if you're specced (and use) maces as opposed to swords here's the breakdown: If you use the fool's bane and merciless bone cracker. Then over the course of 150 seconds (2.5 minutes the length of a farmable boss.) Then the total damage of these two weapons (without accounting for attack power) is 27,775.

If you use the merciless offhand and vindicator's brand it will do only 26,823.1 but after we account for sword specialization they do 28486.7

If you use the merciless offhand and merciless slicer it will do only 29303.8 but after sword specialization it will do 31306.5

This only an estimate and it's nowhere near close to actual values but if we take other factors from actual combat all of those factors buff the sword bonus damage and none of these factors buff maces. For instance I have only accounted for white non-crit damage, but if we factor that in it affects both swords and maces and becomes a wash. But if I were to have included attack power then the white hits still become a wash with the exception of extra swings, meaning that the extra swings will actually do more damage than I've accounted for here. Roughly 2002 additional damage (calculated with 1550 attack power). The most compelling factor, of course, is that Raid Boss fights are usually longer than 150 seconds. Nightbane for example tends to be a longer fight, and so there will be more extra swing potentials for swords.

In conclusion, if you go maces you will still be able to lead the charge in DPS you just won't be on the very top, and you certainly won't beat a sword rogue. If you do decide to upgrade I would honestly go with the off hand weapon first. A new main hand is nice, but it only gives you 16 dps more and 43 more higher damage than your current mainhand. Additionally, there is no offhand weapon that's going to drop for you in Karazhan and the only time, if I'm not mistaken, that I think you can get an off hand that's better than what you have (save for the arena OH sword) is in SSC, which may be quite a ways off.

I hope that helps and if you have any questions about the theory-craft/crap let me know.

+hit

yeah, but he's an Alli, dude.

let's keep giving the Alli the worst advice we can and couch it in helpful sounding terms.

For the Horde!