Best speed choice?Follow

The problem with daggers is the top end damage is weak. Why Rogues go Combat and DW swords... the Dagger Rogues have talents and certian abilities that boost the 'weak' daggers by like 370% or w/e it is (I believe, it's been long time since I played my Rogue).

That being said. Since most of our moves add to our weapon damage, the weapon with the higher <low-high> numbers will work better with your abilities. That's why the Main Hand weapon should be the slowest, hardest hitting weapon you have.

Off Hand weapons... that's where the debate is....
-Weaker hitting/faster off hand will let you swing faster, getting more rage. Some people go that route.

-Slower/harder hitting off hands are well slower lol. Rage may be a problem, but I think it helps out a lot for Whirlwind. I'm not theorycrafter or number cruncher... also I 2H Arms it... so I'm just reciting what I've read here and there.

Finally....

Eh, really only have to worry about what type of weapon for one of two reasons:
1) You travel down the Arms line and spec Mace (for BG/PvP stun %), Axe (for 5% crit), and Sword (5% extra attack).
OR,
2)You have a racial bonus (Human- Swords & Maces?)

Then you might want to lean towards one or the other.


Edited, Aug 29th 2008 3:25pm by GYFFORD

Ok, fast versus slow.

Fast weapons will consume "charges" much faster doing less damage per charge. This is a negative for Enrage and Sweeping Strikes, but "insignificantly positive" for the insignificant bloodthirst heal effect.

It's only "decent" advantage is faster 5-stacking of Rampage. Not really that significant a bonus IMO.

Daggers scale worse than 1-hand weapons (fist included) for overpower and whirlwind. Since Whirl hits with the offhand too then you want the offhand to be slow too.

The traditional idea of having fast offhand and slow mainhand was due to benefits they would have on game mechanics that are now outdated and therefore it doesn't matter anymore.

With Titans grip coming we may be able to get to DW weapons that have weapon speeds all the way down to 3.8 (unless you want to dig out the pendulum of doom).

Currently in wotlk there's 2 talents that wouldn't favor weapons being too slow. Furious attacks and the BT heal effect. You'll have to chose between a speed that quickly applies furios attacks and fully consumes the BT heal effect versus a speed that hits harder with instant attacks.

Lets see... asuming yellow damage consumes BT charges... and you have permaflurry on...

The next BT attack will consume a charge. So you need to consume 4 charges in 6 seconds.

The magic speed formula for consuming all 4 bt charges from autoattack would be

3.75*hit/100

So if your hit (discounting dodge/parry/block) is 80% then your speed for that should be:

3.75*80/100=3

Speeds slower than that will leave BT charges without being consumed more often.

Been thinking about this since I posted (off and on)... I came up with a question. What about Procs? Executioner or Mongoose. Can both proc at the same time (say if one had Exe the other have Mongoose)? Would it semi be worth a slow/fast combo to get it to proc more? Or maybe even in PvP for a 'higher' chance for a Mace spec stun, that's if anyone even goes DW arms/fury lol in arenas/BGs (I did not, I went straigh Protect lol Concus Blow rocks).

I'd still say you'll prolly WW more, so the slow hand extra damage would scale better... but thought I'd ask anyway.

Weapon enchants proc with a constant rate per minute, not depending on the weapon speed. That creates a funny situation, because the % chance of proccing per hit is adjusted and different for each weapon speed.
Slow weapon has high chance of proccing per hit, fast one has a much smaller chance.

Now consider instant attacks - e.g. Devastate. They use the same % chance of proccing as autoattack, which makes a slow weapon proc almost 2 times more often than a fast one. The same with extra attacks from sword spec and windfury and whatever else warriors have.

So for main hand (which is the one for instant attacks) it is a big bonus to have slow weapon and a "proccing" enchant. Offhand does not matter much.

I put once fiery weapon enchant on a 3.7 weapon. That thing procced almost every second hit. That was fun.

The speed of the weapon will not affect white damage.

The slower the weapon, yes, the better HS damage for little details not worth explaining here.

As for BT damage, it depends on AP. But BT has a heal effect that heals you by consuming BT buff charges. This healing effect is currently insignificant, but in the future it will be changed and not be so insignificant. BT has a 6 sec cooldown. So if you want to make the most out of the BT healing effects you need to consumne all 4 charges in the 6 seconds of cooldown of BT, for that you need a weapon speed that will score 4 hits in those 6 seconds. The fifth charge gets consumed by the next BT attack.