Duel Wield...weapon speedFollow

I have leveled a rogue to 70 and knew the optimum setup was a slow main hand and a fast off hand. Is this the case with warrior as well? This is geared towards early pve as my warrior is now level 27. Do I do this or go for 2 fast weapons or does it matter?

Robert is mostly correct.

Theoretically a slow offhand and a fast offhand will generate the same amount of rage. A fast offhand will have a more even rage generation whereas a slow offhand will have a more spikey rage generation.

For mainhand, speed is a deceiving stat to look at.

What you want on your mainhand weapon is a weapon with the highest average damage (low end dmg range + high end dmg range divided by speed). When looking at 2 weapons with the same DPS, the slower weapon will always have the higher average damage.

With a slower offhand your WW will do more damage, but with a faster offhand you will have a much more steady flow of rage. It's really up to you which one you choose.

This ...

What Bigdaddyjug said is pretty correct (in one sense) ... you DO want the highest average damage weapon .. normally, for the same DPS ... the slower weapon gives you the highest avg damage.

THe reason for saying this, is that you may find a weapon with a slower speed, but the faster weapon still hits harder (generally, this will mean the fast weapon's DPS is higher, so it should be a simple thought process wrt upgrading).

I once took a 2.2 speed sword over a 2.6 speed sword, cos the 2.2 sword had higher damage numbers ... and yes, it made a big diffs (prolly mostly due to the fact that the DPS was Waaay higher, but hey ... the theory stands ;->)

But, as Norellicus said, you get the average my a simple average calc ... ie, (Max dmg + Min dmg) / 2 .. not divided by weapon speed ...

The only reason to be concerned about a dagger as a weapon type is because of the normalised Damage. However, the fact that it's a dagger means that it's probably a quick weapon .. which hurts Flurry mechanics to a degree ... this logic applies to any fast weapon ... HOWEVER ..

As you are only level 31 ... get the best dps weapon you can, when you can ... and go from there. Having a fast weapon gimps you dps in a raid sitation by around 10dps ... seriously nothing to get too excited about .. while levelling, it's a moot point ... no worries there.

Bear one thing in mind, any advise you're going to get about optimal weapon / gear setup is almost always related to end game ... and as a leveller, can be largely ignored. So I say again .. get the best dagger / axe / sword / mace, etc you can and go with it ... you'll generally be replacing it in a few levels anyway.

Another thing you might want to bear in mind though, is with slower weapons, hit plays a slightly more important role. As DW ... it's only really imperative to be hit capped for specials (that means 5% hit for same level mobs, 9% for end game bosses (3 levels above)) ... you will still be missing with white (auto) attacks then, but you won't miss with your specials ... which is important. When you go 2 hander .. it becomes vitally important to be hit capped, you only have a 5% chance to miss, but a miss is very costly, and you don't really want to do that.

Equipping a slow off hander, to a degree, has similar concerns ... if your offhander is fast and you miss ... no worries, you'll swing again in 1.5secs .. if your off hander is slow and you miss, you need to wait generall about a full second (sometimes more) before swinging again.

All that being said, hit gear is not exactly readiliy available at lower levels, so you may want to consider that when thinking about weapon speed.

*EDIT*
Sorry, I jumped in too quickly to answer there and missed the main point of your question. The fact that the dagger's dps is soo much higher than the mace, I would say to continue using the dagger in the main hand. However, when the dps of a non-dagger starts to approach the dagger ... it's time to think about switching.

Use this rough calculation to decide this. If it's a dagger ... take the DPS of the weapon and multiply it by 1.8 ... in this instance that's 37.08 .. that's the number a heroic strike uses to determine what damage to do. THe mace's dps is 12.8 ... multiply THAT by 2.4 (as a non-dagger weapon) .. that gives you a number of 30.72, which is still lower than the dagger... this means that the dagger will hit harder with HS than the mace.

However, if you were to find a 16 dps non-dagger ... it would do more damage than the dagger for heroic strike (38.4) to be precise.

Now, here's the kicker ... 20dps white damage is quite a bit higher that 16dps ... while HS will be pretty much the same... so in this borderline instance ... the dagger is still probably your better bet ... however, as soon as you pick up a sword (or whatever) with 20dps ... then it's WILL be considerably better than the dagger... at that stage, move the dagger to off hand, and equip the sword in main hand ....

Long story short ... 2 weapons ... 1 dagger, 1 sword .. same DPS ... sword is ALWAYS better.

Complicated ??, yeah, I guess ... fun?? ... ooh absolutely .. have some of that fun now y'hear ;-)

Edited, May 22nd 2008 4:15am by robertlofthouse

Not to be offensive here, but how the heck do you calculate dps ... unless it's just waaaay too late for me, the way I see DPS being calculated is

(min.damage + max.damage) / 2 / <speed>

.. that's DIVIDED by speed, not multiplied ...

Let's put an example up here .. let's take a weapon with min dmg of 20 and max damage of 40 ... and a speed of 2 ... Using you calculation ... that's a 60 dps weapon !!!!!

To state the obvious, the speed of the weapon is how long the swing timer is ... so a weapon speed of 2 indicates a hit every 2 seconds .. that's an average hit of 30 ((20+40)/2) every 2 seconds ... or 15 damage per 1 second ... not 60 dps.



Yup, agreed there, I ignored the HS modifiers as they would be the same regardless, and AP is not going to make THAT much of a diffs at this level, besides, it's easier to illustrate without those numbers. And yes, apologies - normalised speed is 1.7 for daggers, not 1.8.



I'm very sorry, but these 2 calculations are the formulas that you presented earlier for DPS ... which are wrong, and don't in any way, represent the damage done per strike for each weapon.

You do realise that the speed for Thornspike is 1.7, which means it's not affected by normalisation at all.. you've just changed (by making use of your calculation) a 20.6 dps dagger into a 59.5 dps dagger.

Now, a slight adjustment, I do believe, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, that the normalisation number (as shown for weapon types above) is only used to calculate the effective damage for a weapon from DPS derived from AP.

ie, if you have 56 AP, which equates to 4 dps, using a dagger means your damage done per strike is based on that 4 dps being delivered by a 1.7 speed weapon. If you use a sword, that 4 dps is based on being delivered by a 2.4 speed weapon. Simple logic shows that the slower weapon packs more of a punch for that same 4 dps (derived from AP)

What we're saying is the same thing .. you calculation above, clearly shows DPS from AP used in you calcuation to determine weapon damage, but, you are only using DPS values derived from AP. The bold portion at the end of your equation

HS = X + (min.damage + max.damage) / 2 + Y * AP / 14

clearly indicates the same as the calcuation of mine which you disagreed with .. AP/14 being the added dps.

Ignoring all of that (HS modifiers, AP derived DPS), I'll agree, yes, the Battlesmasher will hit harder, but will ultimately deliver much lower dps due to the vast differences in speed.



I must modify this statement, this calculation should only be applied to AP derived DPS.



Thanks, I do understand why ... I, like you, simply presented some slight flaws in my interpretations.

None taken either ;-) .. my statement WAS off the mark, so a correction was in order.

One major positive, I'm sure anyone that was't clear on the issue before reading this thread, should now be 100% crystal clear on it ;-)


Edited, May 23rd 2008 3:19pm by robertlofthouse

I'd like to add a question in here. When tanking I tend to use the fastest weapon I can, simply because I like to get that initial rage up quickly. Should I too be using a slower weapon to produce more dps and hence more threat, but having a slower initial rage generation?

I know that when the fight gets going I will have more rage than I know what to do with, but these are the times when maintaining aggro is (relatively) easy. It's that initial few seconds when I want all the rage I can get in order to 'grab' the mobs aggro initially.

(This of course is referring to a warrior, not my druid).

Thanks

Edited, Jun 26th 2008 10:30am by KradortheDruid

I hate to derail this thread, but...

In all my trolling over at EJ, I have yet to see any empirical proof espousing slow over fast offhand or vice versa. The notion of slow offhands producing more dps from bigger WW offhand hits and being more efficient with flurry charges hasnt shown to produce more dps than fast offhands producing more rage and allowing more frequent usage of heroic strike.

If anyone can come up with empirical proof showing one speed to be clearly superior over the other, please post or link it.

To put it bluntly. Can you keep a rotation of BT, WW, rampage, bs and maybe even Demo shout going with the rage you generate? How about extra rage? Are those HS spams a huge help to overall DPS and TPS?

Slow/fast OH arguments are about DPS+ vs Rage per second.

Choose the highest DPS OH you can find. Not a dagger preferable, or choose are really fast one if you have to with how AP calculations for normalization are.

I haven't seen any math on slow/fast myself, but my gut tells me that the slower OH will hit a little harder on WW. Not much harder, but in longer fights it will matter. A slow/fast OH should, once you have enough base hit rating, generate the same rage per second.

A slower OH uses less flurry ticks, and keeps your MH hasted longer. A same speed MH/OH should garner an extra bonus tick, without actually changing how flurry works... If you have 1 tick left, and both weapons are synced in speed, they will hit at the same time, which means your other attack gets the full benefit of flurry.

Misplaced Servo Arm's anyone remember those?

testing over at EJ has shown that a slow/slow combo results in 0.5% increased dps from harder hitting whirlwind offhand hits. the dps difference from flurry changes between the slow/fast and slow/slow combos have been shown to be negligible. i haven't seen the math myself, but feel free to browse through the three or four mountains of information they call warrior discussion threads over there.

the bottom line is to pick the offhand with the best stats and highest dps regardless of speed.

Unless I'm mistaken, Windfury Totem has no internal cooldown. It can proc off two consequtive hits, even if they're hasted down to 1 second each. However, Windfury Totem *cannot* proc the offhand, only the mainhand.

So as to the question this quote originated from, offhand speed doesn't effect Windfuries for warriors.

This is completely correct.